


Late Shift at The Umbrella Café

by intravenusann



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Awkward Flirting, Coffee Shops, Family Feels, Food Poisoning, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Meet-Cute, Non-Binary Klaus Hargreeves, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Sober Klaus Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-02-26 11:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18715855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/intravenusann
Summary: Klaus and Ben have the afternoon shift together almost every day. But not every day are the customers as nice — or as hot! — as this new Dave guy.Or, in other words, a story where Klaus gets his life together enough to get a boyfriend.





	1. "Nice to meet you, Klaus."

**Author's Note:**

> You ever been so sad that you suddenly understand why people write no-powers, coffee shop AUs where people are happy?

The man walks into The Umbrella Café just after 2:30, when there hasn’t been a customer in over forty minutes. The windchime above the door jangles and Klaus drops down onto his bare feet and runs for his shoes behind the counter. His apron and hat are somewhere, but he slides up to the register before Ben gets out of the bathroom.

The man smiles.

“Hey,” Klaus says, because it’s a beautiful, perfect smile on a stranger. He was expecting it to be their manager returning from errands — but no, it's this tall, strapping dude who clearly drove over from Hanscom. He could have just gone to Starbucks.

“Hi there,” the man says.

Nearby, Ben coughs. Klaus jolts slightly. He is used to being the tallest person in a room, because he loves wearing heels. But today’s shoes have only a thumbtack of a kitten heel and the man across the register from him is easily an inch taller with his shiny Air Force shoes or whatever. Oh, and he’s all broad in the shoulders. But not in a weird way, like their boss, Klaus thinks.

“So, thanks for visiting The Umbrella Café," Klaus says, like he actually means it, “what can I get you?”

“It’s going to be a big order,” the man says.

Klaus puts his elbows on the counter and leans over. He might as well relish someone being taller than him for a moment.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I can handle it.”

“We can handle it,” Ben says.

Klaus slowly turns his head and glares.

The man — the beautiful, smiling man in a beautifully fitted, pale blue button-up shirt — laughs softly.

He orders eight medium coffees — two with cream and sugar, one with extra cream, and two with only sugar.

“And a large Americano,” he adds. “The biggest you’ve got.”

Klaus tilts his head as he taps the buttons on the iPad’s display.

“You’ve been here before?” he asks.

“No,” he says. “But my see-oh loves this place. She sent me.”

“Huh,” Klaus says, and he nods like that means something to him at all.

The man drums his right hand on the counter and tucks the other hand in his pocket.

“So you haven’t been here before,” Klaus says, “that means you don’t have our rewards card.”

“Unless his boss gave him hers,” Ben says, from the back. Klaus looks at him and scowls.

“She didn’t,” the man says. Klaus looks at him and smiles.

“Would you like one?” he asks.

“Sure,” the man says. “Do I need to fill anything out?”

“No, not at all," Klaus insists. He sets down the iPad and fumbles out one of the printed cardboard cards.

“Your total is $15,” Klaus says.

The man takes a card out of his pocket, not his wallet, a black American Express card. Klaus uses the iPad to type in the information and plugs the damn thing into the weird receipt printer attachment.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches the man take a pen and write “DAVE” on the rewards card.

“Sorry this is taking a while,” Klaus says.

“It’s really not a problem,” the man says. “I’m not in any hurry. This is way better than listening to my boss complaining about her caffeine headache.”

“Here’s your order,” Ben says. 

Klaus takes the card back and stamps it nine times. He slides it back with the receipt.

“Thanks,” Dave pauses and looks at the name tag on Ben’s apron. “Ben.”

He smiles. He looks at Klaus, but Klaus doesn’t have his apron on and doesn’t have any idea where it is.

“And thank you,” Dave says, anyway.

“Klaus!” he says, too loudly.

“Dave,” Dave says, as though Klaus has not read that off his loyalty card already. He puts his hand out. Klaus looks at it for a moment, wide-eyed. And then grabs the man’s hand. He gets the bones of his palm squeezed, just firmly enough to feel nice.

“Cool tattoo, by the way,” Dave says. “Like a Ouija board?”

“Yeah!” Klaus says, with way too much excitement. He hears Ben stepping away from the counter loudly.

“Do you have any tattoos?” Klaus asks.

Dave just laughs. “Nice to meet you, Klaus.”

“Yeah,” Klaus agrees. “Nice to meet you!”

And then Dave turns to leave.

“Come back soon!” Klaus says, which isn’t what they’re supposed to say to customers. Not that Klaus ever says what he’s supposed to say when customers leave.

“He’s literally never coming back here again,” Ben says.

Klaus groans. His shoulders slump and his head tilts back. “Yeah.”

He kicks off his shoes again and goes to find his apron.

“It’s in the bathroom where you left it,” Ben says.

And he’s right. But only about the apron, not about Dave.

The next day around the same time Klaus is curled up on the chairs by the window when Dave walks past. He sees the blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. Dave opens the door just enough to make the windchime jingle and asks, “Are you busy?”

“No,” Klaus says, nearly throwing the book he’s been reading.

“I don’t want to interrupt your break,” Dave says, still not quite stepping into The Umbrella Café.

“He’s not on break,” Ben tells him.

“Oh, well, I walked by and…” Dave says.

“Nope!” Klaus says. “Not on break! Just a lazy piece of shit!”

“Hey man, I read at work too,” Dave says. He finally pushes the door open and steps in. He’s wearing combat boots and fatigues today. Klaus unfolds himself and gets up just to experience what that’s like without any shoes on. Dave feels so tall and big and he looks so damn handsome. He doesn’t seem bothered at all by the way Klaus stares, either.

Klaus wore boots today, too, but they’re behind the counter.

“Don’t worry!” he says, bare feet slapping over the mass-produced linoleum. “I mop this floor!”

Ben takes the iPad at the register.

“What can we get you?” he asks.

This time Ben’s the one with no apron, but it’s draped over the boxes of syrup he was unpacking.

“Same thing as the last time, eight medium coffees,” Dave says. “Two sugars. Two cream and sugar. One extra cream, no sugar. Three black, please.”

Klaus is already packing the espresso for the Americano when Dave adds, “And a large Americano.”

“Coming right up!” Klaus says. And he turns around because he’s hoping Dave will smile at that. 

He does. And Klaus wants to smile back, like a real, genuine smile. It kind of makes his face hurt.

“What is wrong with you?” Ben asks.

“Nothing!” Klaus says. “I just like coffee!! Do you like coffee?”

“Yeah,” Ben says, “obviously.”

Dave looks at Klaus, but he doesn’t answer. And Klaus doesn’t want to bother him, especially when Ben keeps pointing out in that Ben way of his that Klaus is being a weirdo. This is the natural state of things, honestly. Klaus’ cheek twinges as he stops smiling. He adds cream and sugar, cream and sugar, lots of cream, some sugar and some sugar to the eight cups lined up along the counter. The coffee is a little old. They are supposed to brew fresh coffee every twenty minutes, but when there are no customers after lunch, Klaus forgets to dump out the old coffee.

Dave takes his receipt from Ben and then looks at Klaus, who is setting up all the recycled-cardboard carrying containers full of recycled-paper cups.

“Which are, uh, undoctored?” he asks.

Klaus raises an eyebrow. “Well, they’re all doctored. In a way. Doctored up by me.”

Dave smiles a little, and Ben’s elbow goes for Klaus’ ribs. But he misses because Klaus knew it was coming. He scoots to the left.

“These are the ones without cream or sugar,” Klaus says, pointing to each of the three. He twists the cup around slightly. “See? Blank as fuck.”

Dave takes the cup that Klaus is touching and their fingers almost brush. Klaus shakes his arm. The warm feeling is just the heat of the coffee leaking through the cup.

“Careful,” Klaus says. “It’s hot.”

“You gonna get the Americano or not,” Ben says. It’s a question, but it’s also really not a question. Ben steps up and loads up the Espresso machine again.

“I like your coffee,” Dave says. “And, I mean, my boss loves your coffee. So you must be doing something right.”

Ben sets the Americano on the counter, where it towers over the medium coffees. Klaus watches Dave set the cover of his coffee right and put it back into the cardboard. He has big hands, Klaus thinks. He can hold two of the cardboard holders in one hand and carry the Americano in his other.

“Thanks Klaus!” Dave says, over his shoulder. “And Ben!”

“See you tomorrow!” Klaus says, optimistically.

“You’re not scheduled tomorrow,” Ben points out.

Klaus shrugs. “I could be.”

He isn’t. But he sees Dave the day after, and he says, “Long time, no see.”

Ben is off, so it’s Five who squints at Klaus and tilts his head slightly when Klaus asks, “Same as usual?”

“You got it,” Dave says. Klaus fumbles through putting in the order.

“What’s the usual?” Five asks.

“I got it!” Klaus says. “I can put it in and then make the order, it won’t take long.”

“That’s against protocol,” Five says.

“Well, there’s not a line and you deserve a break,” Klaus says. “Right? I mean, you’ve been clocked in since the morning. Take a load off, Five. Take a sit.”

“Is your name really ‘Five’?” Dave asks.

“Yes,” Five answers, showing the nametag on his apron that reads “Mr. Five.”

Actually, he’s got this long-ass pretentious family name with a V at the end, but he hates all the other nicknames Klaus had given him. And the full name doesn’t fit on the name card. It said V for a while, but then Klaus kept calling him Valerie and Valentina and Vicky. So now, he’s Mr. Five, because Klaus’ manager is a coward. A coward with a doctorate in theoretical physics.

And so what, Klaus thinks, as he struggles with the goddamn receipt printer again, if they’re the same age only Five looks like he’s still twenty at best and is technically Dr. Five and gets paid like $3 more dollars an hour!

He is still a coward.

“Sorry about this,” Klaus says.

Dave shrugs. “I’m really not in a hurry.”

“Why not?” Five asks. He’s got a fist resting on his hip like an annoyed housewife.

Dave shrugs. “This is a chance to get off work in the middle of the afternoon. Who wouldn’t take it?”

Oh, yeah, Five does not like that. But at least he goes off to glare at Klaus — and probably Dave, too — from a distance. Klaus hums the riff of an Otep song to himself as he grinds the beans and packs the grounds into the cup thing he always forgets the name of on the espresso machine. Five probably knows what it is in like seven languages.

He labels cups with the marker and pours coffee.

“I’ll make more,” Five says, when Klaus nearly finishes it off pouring the last of the eight cups.

Fridays are always busy.

“See you tomorrow?” Klaus asks, after stamping what is obviously a new loyalty card.

“Sorry,” Dave says. “I don’t work on weekends.”

Klaus works weekends. And it sucks. Klaus works most of the days of the week and gets a whole little section on his paycheck for OT hours. Every couple of months he has to have a chat with Luther, whose head is the size of a pomelo — big, but not as big as a human head ought to be — about all the overtime. The café could hire more people. But they don’t.

Dave comes every weekday and orders the nine coffees. After a week or two, he stops by on a Saturday and gets one of the refrigerated sandwiches that they sell from Grace’s catering. Then that’s just part of his routine — a weekend coffee and sandwich. But it’s usually busy on the weekends, with people coming in whenever the fuck they want and university people loitering on all the good chairs. If there are no tables, Dave just waves as he heads out with his late lunch.

He always says please and thank you! He always takes his wallet out and shoves a dollar or _two_ into the tip jar. He calls Klaus by his name instead of “hey, barista!” or “you.” Or worse things, actually. But people who insult Klaus tend not to come back. So far he hasn’t been forced to spit in anyone’s coffee.

On the weekends, Klaus fills Ben in on anything he missed on days off or if he was on break. Diego comes by and sometimes he mops the floors, which might be his job, and sometimes he just watches Klaus mop the floor while playing Lorn on the café’s sound system.

“This Dave sounds like a sweet guy,” Diego says. “When’s he gonna ask you out?”

“Never,” Ben says.

“Don’t make that noise,” Diego says. “It gives me a headache.”

Klaus stops making the noise.

“So when are you going to ask him out, then?” Diego asks. 

Klaus stops mopping the floor. Diego looks at him. He looks to Ben. Ben looks at him. The music traitorously fades out from one song to another.

“Uh,” Klaus says.

“Cool,” Diego says. “Okay.”

The answer is: Never.

But Dave keeps coming to pick up coffee for his office and Klaus keeps talking about his smile and the jokes he told and the way he said, “Hang in there” because Klaus said he was tired.

If Klaus asks Dave how he is, Dave always asks, “How are you?” And he listens and he nods as Klaus adds cream to coffee and water to espresso. Even if the stuff Klaus says is dumb or makes no sense. Even when Ben says, “Are you gonna talk or are you gonna get the order?”

Dave prefers roast beef to tuna salad. He likes chocolate chip cookies, even the store-bought kind. He doesn’t like the cold, but he’s from the Midwest so he can live with it. He calls Klaus’ patent leather, plum and gold, high-heeled oxfords that he got for $3 at Buffalo Exchange “really cool.”

And Klaus sees him every day that he can, because Klaus doesn’t miss work anymore. He doesn’t get hangovers or stay up all night on benders. His worst habit is that sometimes he’ll eat roasted coffee beans out of the bag.

And maybe too much takeout.

Because Ben finds a couple boxes at the back of the fridge. No idea when they bought these or really what they are. Chinese food, maybe? But one looks like spaghetti and meatballs in tomato sauce.

“I think this is bibimbap,” Klaus says, poking at something with a probably-clean fork. It has carrots in it and smells like kimchi spices.

“When did we eat Korean?” Ben asks.

They paid rent on the first of the month and now it’s a week and a half later. Their wallets are empty, but the fridge isn’t. It probably should be emptier than it is.

“Is this curry?” Ben asks, shoving something under Klaus’ nose. It’s green and goes right to Klaus’ sinuses. 

“Thai?” Klaus suggests. His eyes water.

“Oh,” Ben says. “Lumpia!”

“What if you pick one and I’ll pick another?” Ben says. “You know, even out the odds of one of us dying of botulism.”

“I mean,” Klaus says. “How bad can it be? It’s been in the fridge.”

Ben looks at him.

Klaus rinses a plastic bowl from the pile in the sink and dumps the might-be-bibimbap into it. Ben takes the spaghetti and lumpia. They save the rest for later in the week. It’s only Wednesday.

They eat leftovers again on Thursday.

Friday morning, Klaus can’t get out of bed. He hears Ben shuffle out of his studio-cum-bedroom and head into the kitchen. Through the open door, Klaus hears the microwave beeping. He can smell the curry that Ben heats up.

His stomach clenches.

Suddenly, he really, really has to get out of bed. Right now.

About two hours into it, when they should be getting ready for work, Ben starts pounding on the door. 

“Klaus! Open this door or I will kick it down and puke on you!”

They share an apartment with two bedrooms and one bathroom. Technically, Klaus isn’t even on the lease and pays slightly less than half of the rent. It only happened because he was considering moving in with a guy he had slept with once off Grindr and Ben said, “I have an extra bedroom. Don’t look at me like that. Seriously, Klaus.”

He had already moved eight times in the twelve months he had been working at The Umbrella Café.

Most people considered Klaus an intolerable roommate, but by then Ben already knew how Klaus dressed and his personal philosophy regarding shoes. He knew Klaus was a barely human mess, essentially. And exacto blades in the sofa cushions, toxic paints in the occasionally cup of tea, and the piles of unwashed dishes and dirty hoodies seem not to matter when Ben doesn’t scream about Klaus lounging around naked.

Dave doesn’t mind Klaus walking around the coffee shop without shoes or in heels and a skirt — unlike some customers. But he’d probably draw the line at how Klaus is behind closed doors. Most people do.

Those are the thoughts swimming in Klaus’ head as he carries around the empty paint bucket Ben has offered him.

“I need to call someone,” Klaus says.

His phone already has missed calls from the café.

“Thank you for calling The Umbrella Café,” Vanya says. “This is Vanya speaking. How can I help you?”

She sounds so calm.

“Hey,” he says, voice ragged from vomiting until his throat burns. “It’s Klaus.”

“Oh,” Vanya says. “Should I get uh… Allison was trying to call you, I think? You’re late.”

“I can’t make it,” Klaus says. “Ben, too. We’re like… really sick.”

He imitates the sound of his own retching and, in the bathroom, Ben pukes again for real.

“Gross,” Vanya says. “I’ll get Allison.”

Allison is clearly, clearly pissed off at both of them. But she says, “Don’t worry about your shifts. Do you want me to bring your checks by?”

“Yes,” Klaus says. “Please?”

Someday soon he might want to eat again. Just not today.

At 10:30 that night, when Klaus and Ben would usually still cleaning up and closing the café, Allison knocks on their apartment door.

“If you two put the wrong information on your W-4, the IRS will eat us alive,” she says. “Open up!”

Klaus sits in a pile of laundry leaning over his bucket. He gets up to find underwear or pants or, at least, a towel. In a move that Klaus would never expect from a divorced mother who manages a coffee shop and pays actors’ guild dues, Allison jostles the doorknob and shoves. Their door opens until it hits the chain. Klaus stands there holding a pair of Ben’s sweatpants halfway up his hips. His neatly shaved pubic bone is definitely visible. 

“Oh good, this is your apartment,” Allison says.

Then, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“The fuck did you mean to do,” Klaus croaks. He has not spoken since the phone call earlier.

“See if anyone was home,” Allison says.

“We are home,” Klaus says.

“I can see that,” she says.

They look at each other. “You look awful.”

“Thanks,” Klaus says. He bends over and picks up his bucket.

“Can you let me in?” she asks.

Klaus shuts the door in her face — so he can undo the chain. Allison seems to understand that, somehow, without him saying anything. Maybe it’s the puke bucket? Maybe it just says everything that Klaus can’t or doesn’t think to say.

Ben, still wearing the hoodie and sweatpants he went to bed in last night, staggers out of the bathroom. The air in a wave around him smells so bad it makes Klaus’ guts twist.

“You guys are really sick, huh,” Allison says. 

Klaus nods.

“I brought your checks,” she says.

Ben lets out a very small “yay” before collapsing on the couch.

“So,” Allison says, looking them over, “what happened? You’re not contagious are you?”

“Bad takeout,” Ben says, into the cushions.

“Leftovers attacked us,” Klaus explains.

“Brutal,” Allison says. She looks around Ben’s apartment: “But not surprising.”

She sighs. “How do you two live like this?”

Then, just as rhetorical, “Don’t you get tired of it?”

Here’s the thing: Allison is a mom and a coffee shop manager and an actress and also easily one of the most beautiful people to ever grace the earth. Klaus is like a solid six. Ben is a seven. Five is a five, obviously. Luther is an eight. Diego has a great fucking facial scar and Vanya looks amazing in a suit, so they are probably nines on good days. Dave is a ten — Dave the dime. 

But Allison breaks the scale.

And now she’s standing in Klaus and Ben’s apartment with her arms crossed over her perfect breasts in the perfect white croptop she never spills coffee on. Her pants are hunter green and leave only the smallest patch of brown skin between her ribs showing on her belly. It’s so smooth and perfect, like one of the polished stones Ben collects for his art.

“When was the last time you did laundry?” she asks. “Or dishes? Jesus Christ.”

She goes into the kitchen and Klaus trails behind her.

“Where did you buy those boots?” he asks. They’re a green so dark it’s almost black, with a chunky heel.

“New York,” she says, and Klaus frowns.

“Look,” she says, taking off her jacket, “I’m not doing this because I’m your boss, and I am definitely not your mother.”

Klaus crosses his arms over his chest, nervously hiding his nipples. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Allison says. “And if you tell anyone…”

She pauses. “Especially Five.”

Klaus nods. “Yes, very important. Don’t tell Five.”

“Or Diego,” Allison adds. “Or Luther.”

Klaus keeps nodding.

“So not anyone,” Klaus says. “Specifically not any of the men we work with.” He pulls his hand out his armpit and gestures for emphasis.

“Yes,” Allison says.

“Okay,” Klaus says. “I am sworn to secrecy.”

And then she turns toward the sink and pushes the lever for the hot water.

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” Klaus says. “What are you doing? Let me help!”

Allison ignores him; even shoulders him away from her when he reaches over for the extra green scrubby at the back of the sink.

“Get away from me,” she says. “You’re sick.”

Klaus gasps, wounded, before he remembers that he has been carrying a puke bucket around all day.

“It’s our apartment,” Klaus says. “I should be… You shouldn’t be doing this for us.”

“You’re damn right I shouldn’t,” Allison says.

“But you’re looking pretty pitiful right now,” she says, looking Klaus over, “and I pity you.”

He repeats the gasping, wounded sound. Allison turns back to the dishes. “If you want to help, go take a shower or something. Do the laundry.”

Klaus looks down at himself. Obviously, Ben’s sweatpants probably are not — how to say it — very fresh. But he took a bath last night before falling asleep. Klaus cautiously lifts his arm and does a quick pit sniff.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right.”

As he leaves the kitchen, Klaus scoops up the puke bucket. Ben turns his head and pleads for him not to close the bathroom door.

“But Allison,” he says.

“Allison does not care,” she says.

A hot shower feels really good, like Klaus might actually be a human being after all. He closes his eyes and lets the water run down him. They really need a taller shower, so he doesn’t have to bend down to get his head wet. They need one of those shower attachments. As his limbs relax, Klaus sits down in the tub. At some point Ben comes in and asks if he’s drowned yet. He hasn’t.

When Klaus gets out and wraps his towel around him, he finds that Allison has finished the dishes. Now she’s taking things out of their fridge and shoving it all into a large garbage bag.

“Aw man, what are we gonna eat?” Klaus says. “We’ll starve to death.”

Allison looks up at him. “Then die.”

“But our food, Allison, that’s our food,” he persists.

“No, it’s not,” Allison says. “How the hell haven’t you both already died from eating this garbage?”

It’s a very good question.

Allison makes him put on clothes (a flowered sundress) and shoes (knock-off Doc Martens) to take the garbage out.

“Tell anyone,” she says, “and I’ll fire you.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Klaus says. “But yeah, whatever…”

They look at each other. Klaus feels guilty inside, and hungry and sore, too. He blinks.

“Thanks, Allison,” he says. “We really owe you.”

“No, you don’t,” she tells him.

She takes her hair down and he realizes that she must have put all her curls up with a scrunchie. 

“Where did I put my jacket?” she asks.

Ben groans from the couch. Her jacket is draped over the cushions above his head.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Oh yeah,” she says as she picks it up. “This guy stopped in this afternoon was asking about you, Klaus.”

“Me?” Klaus asks. He points at the machine-made lace at his collar.

“Yeah,” Allison says. “It’s weird, he comes in every morning and doesn’t seem to even notice who works the morning shift. He’s in and out with like ten coffees.”

“Nine,” Klaus says.

Allison squints.

“Ten,” she says. She looks Klaus up and down for a long moment. Klaus can feel the sweat starting to gather in his armpits.

“But it was nine when he came back,” she says. “He’s a real frequent flyer. Wanted to know if it was your day off.”

“Did you tell him?” Klaus asks. Did she tell Dave that he’s spent all day violently evacuating the entire contents of his body in the health-hazard of an apartment he shares with Ben?

Allison snorts. “Hell no. It’s none of his business.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “Is it, Klaus?”

He stares at her wide-eyed for a moment and then shakes his head.

“Okay, cool,” she says. “Take the weekend off. I don’t wanna see you barf bags until Monday.”

Klaus nods and, from flat on the couch, Ben lifts a hand and gives her a thumbs’ up.

When Ben finally feels like a person, which is just before Klaus bodily drags him to a hospital emergency room, Klaus makes toast using the cheapest white bread he can get and the frying pan. They had a toaster, but it broke.

“I want congee,” Ben says. 

“Well too bad, I don’t know how to make that,” Klaus says. 

“I don’t want your congee,” Ben says. “I want my mom’s congee.”

“Oh,” Klaus says. And Ben must have just come back from the very edge of death if he’s talking about his mom.

“It’s okay,” Ben says, after a while.

He finishes his toast. “You should ask Dave out.”

Klaus can only laugh. 

“He was asking Allison about you when you weren’t there,” Ben says. He gestures with a bread crust.

“He likes you.”

Klaus swallows around the things he wants to say: Dave likes him? The strung-out weirdo in tacky heels whose only profitable skill is pouring coffee? The guy who just puked up expired leftovers all weekend in shithole apartment that he can’t actually afford?

Dave doesn’t like him. Dave doesn’t even know him.

“He’s just nice,” Klaus says. “I mean you know me, Ben, do I seem very likable to you?”

Klaus laughs again, at himself and maybe at the face Ben makes. He clearly doesn’t see the humor in it, though he really should. 

“When you’re not being a stupid asshole,” Ben says.

“So, never?” Klaus shoots back. He lifts both hands and shoots Ben a pair of finger guns. Ben rolls his eyes.

“Whatever,” Ben says. “Die alone. See if I care.”

“I won’t die alone if you’re here, Ben, baby,” Klaus points out.

Ben finishes his toast and gets up to lock Klaus out of the bathroom. Then, he goes to his bedroom and shuts the door again. Klaus pouts for a while, but then he takes a long bath. He’s got dollar store bubble bath and a little speaker for his phone that fits on top of the toilet in easy reach.

When he’s finished with his bath, Klaus brushes his teeth.

Ben’s studio-slash-bedroom door is open. Klaus walks in and lies down on Ben’s bed in his towel.

“You’re getting my pillow wet,” Ben says.

Klaus takes the towel off from around his hips and folds it up under his head. Ben sighs. He’s working on this acrylics piece so heavy with paint that it bulges away from the canvas. Purples and blues move in a wave around a sliver of yellow that gets buried under the other paints.

Klaus watches Ben layer new blues and purples and blacks on the canvas. He accidentally puts the brush in his mouth once, and into his coffee cup twice. The minutes tick by. 

The techno track playing on Ben’s spotify repeats, “Lemme tell you something. It ain’t what you got, it’s what you do with what you have. You understand? And, it ain’t what you do. It’s how you do it.” 

Ben carves into the paint with a knife and then reshapes it with more paint.

On Monday, when Klaus clocks in, he remembers that Allison mentioned Dave coming by in the mornings too.

“Ten coffees,” he says to himself.

“What?” Vanya asks.

“Nothing,” he says. “I gotta go change!”  

His dress goes into his bag and he puts on a wrinkled blouse and a pair of purple jeans, already too short for him and pegged to his mid-calf.

“Looking cute, Klaus,” Vanya says.

“Same to you, handsome,” he tells her. She makes a face like she doesn’t believe him.

“I mean you always do,” Klaus says. “But those pleats. Is that a tuxedo shirt?” He brushes past her shoulders to clock in.

“Yes,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

“Like sunshine and spring flowers,” Klaus says. “Fresh as a daisy.”

“That’s good,” she says. “Hey, did anyone tell you about the new rewards program?”

Klaus pours some of the house coffee for himself. “No, what’s up with it?”

“I’m sure Luther or Five will explain,” she says, washing her hands and then disinfecting them before going to make espresso. “But we are going to this new app and we have to get customer’s phone numbers.”

The coffee burns Klaus’ soft palette at the back of his mouth. He took choir in school. He knows the parts of his mouth. He’d probably be making music his life still — he hadn’t fucked himself over by associating it forever with putting things in his mouth and nose that don’t belong there. Good job, Klaus! Killing his own dreams!

“That’s cool,” Klaus says. “I’m sure it won’t be super annoying at all. I am great at getting phone numbers.”

“Cause you’re so hot,” Vanya says, absolutely deadpan.

“Oh yeah, you know me,” Klaus says. “I get mistaken all the time for a supermodel.”

“Is this an acid flashback?” Ben asks. “Do you think you’re Allison?”

Klaus gives him the finger under the counter, so the lunch customers won’t see.

“Hello Klaus,” Luther says, when he sees them. “Ben. Glad to see you back on your feet.”

“Thanks,” Ben says, for the both of them.

“Allison said you weren’t well,” Luther continues. “We were all worried about you.”

“Sure,” Ben says, again, for both of them.

“That’s a very nice, uh, top, Klaus,” Luther says.

“Ben’s more of a switch, I think,” Klaus says.

“What do you want, Luther?” Ben asks.

“We made some changes to our customer rewards program,” Luther says. And then he pulls Ben and Klaus aside to give the twenty-minute version of what Vanya said. There was a training. Ben and Klaus missed it. There was a meeting, but Ben and Klaus were definitely not paying attention. Or maybe they missed that too? It was probably at like 5 a.m. before the café opens.

“That could’ve been an email,” Ben says, when Luther goes to make sure Vanya has clocked out.

“That could have been a text,” Klaus says.

“A Twitter DM,” Ben adds.

“A snapchat filter,” Klaus says. 

Ben’s eyebrows do something that makes Klaus snort and cover his face with the back of his hand. He ducks away.

“A BBM,” Ben says, sneaking past him to man the register.

“Big beautiful —” Luther appears from nowhere somehow and looks down at Klaus. He swallows and turns to the counter. “Hi there! How can I help you?”

“Large mocha latte,” the customer in line says.

“Large mocha latte,” Klaus says. “Do you have a rewards account?”

He kicks his shoes off behind the counter as a silent “fuck you” to Luther, but he gets caught immediately. Of course.


	2. "See you, Klaus"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave is so perfect and hot that Klaus' crush might be contagious.

Some of the women that Klaus tells about the new loyalty program think he’s hitting on them. That goes a couple of ways, really, from understandable reluctance to a kind of sly eagerness that feels kind of like sexual harassment.

A girl hands over her old cardboard rewards card by scratching it against the back of Klaus’ hand. He can only raise an eyebrow and say, “Okay, then.”

But it’s men who give Ben and Klaus a whole, “I don’t see why I have to give you any of my information.”

“Sir,” Ben says, “would you like free coffee or not?”

“That’s not,” Luther says from the side.

At least Luther comes in handy — with those big ol’ biceps so swollen from protein shakes and powerlifting that he can’t properly bend his arm — when a guy takes huge offense to Ben asking for his number. Klaus tries to step in when the guy says, “You people.” But honestly, if the guy has a problem with Ben, he’s got a bigger problem with Klaus.

But Luther — sweet, reliable, humongous Luther — politely tells him to leave. Klaus stands up to his full height, in heels, so the man can see just how much taller Klaus is than him. And, by the transitive property, how much, much, _much_ taller Luther must be.

The man leaves.

And Klaus only feels a little sick to his stomach when Luther heads out for the day.

“Five will be here in an hour,” he says. “Call me if you need to.”

It would mean more, really, if Klaus didn’t know that Luther’s concern for them probably only stems from Allison’s concern for them. And why Allison even has concern for them? It’s just that she’s a good person, maybe. 

Also, Five is really not going to do shit if someone wants to pick a fight that Klaus can’t end. 

A woman comes in and orders a skim milk latte. She’s wearing a track jacket and highly structured lululemon leggings. Klaus would love a pair of those leggings, but the price is not right. He loads up the espresso machine.

The woman leaves without a thank you.

And then comes back five minutes later, just enough time for Klaus to forget everything but her leggings.

“I asked for a soy milk latte,” she says. “This is obviously not soy milk.”

“Uh,” Klaus says.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Ben says, “we can make you soy milk latte, but…”

“But what?” she snaps. “This idiot tried to poison me!”

She sticks her finger in Klaus’ face.

“You said skim milk,” Ben says. 

“No, I fucking didn’t!” the woman yells.

She puts the cup on the counter too hard and it makes the distinct sound of a mostly empty coffee cup.

“Ma’am,” Ben says, “it seems like you already drank this.”

“I poured it out!” she says. “It’s abusive poisonous garbage and you tried to feed it to me!”

“Do you want a new one?” Ben asks.

“I want my money back!” she says. “You!”

“I need a manager for that,” Klaus says.

“Oh fuck you,” she says.

“I’m the manager,” Ben says. “And I’d like you to leave.”

“I’m going to tell everyone I know! This is not the kind of establishment that respects dietary restrictions!”

“I’m very sorry ma’am,” Ben says. “I can’t refund you for a drink you may have consumed. I can only make you a new latte.”

“Fuck you!”

In the end, she slams her almost finished coffee on the floor and calls Klaus a motherfucker. What’s left of the skim milk latte goes in every direction.

“What is wrong with people?” Klaus asks.

“I’ll get the mop,” Ben says. But Klaus takes it from him after he pulls it out of the store room.

He swishes the splattered coffee remnants around with dirty mop water. When he starts wishing a horrible death on the lululemon lady, Ben leans against the counter. The movement draws Klaus’ eye. He watches Ben for a while, picking at the paint around his cuticles. Ben lost his parents when he was just a kid. He lived with an aunt until she had to leave the U.S. to care for his grandparents. She never came back. Klaus’ parents cut him off, sure, and then moved. He’s back in the area he grew up in (sort of) and they’re not.

But, they’re not dead.

Death is too permanent to wish on even the lululemon lady.

And thinking about that makes a lump form in Klaus’ throat.

This is so stupid and cliché. He can’t even have a deep thought without it feeling like some crappy three-line poem to be written on Twitter and screencapped for Tumblr.

“You okay?” Ben asks.

“Yeah,” Klaus says. “I’m fine.”

He finishes mopping up the coffee. “I’m gonna sit down.”

Five doesn’t show up.

But Dave does.

Klaus sees him coming down the sidewalk from a cute, little green car. He doesn’t know anything about cars, but he likes the dent in the back bumper and the color. Klaus draws his knees up to his tits and then flings himself out of the chair he’s sitting in like a marble from a slingshot.

He slides on the soles of his feet against the floor and slips into the scuffed pair of (fake) patent leather heels behind the counter.

“Hi Dave!” he says, when the door opens and the windchime jingles.

“Hey Klaus,” Dave says. “And Ben! It’s both of you!”

Dave smiles and, when he looks, Ben is smiling back. Like really smiling. The smile drops off after a moment and Ben looks confused.

“Did you have a nice break from work?” Dave asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” Klaus says. “All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for Monday!”

Dave laughs and the skin around his eyes crinkles a little. He has the prettiest blue eyes.

“Can I get the usual?” Dave asks. “Eight mediums. Two cream and sugar. One —”

“Extra cream with no sugar and two with just sugar,” Klaus finishes. “And an Americano.”

Dave laughs. “Yeah, yeah, you remember.”

Klaus winks. “Of course, I do. Wouldn’t want to forget a single word you say.”

Dave laughs harder.

When he turns, Ben punches him lightly in the meat of his left tit.

“Ow,” Klaus says. “What was that for?”

“I’ll make the coffee,” Ben says. “You… do the rewards thing.”

“What rewards thing?” Klaus asks. “Oh yeah, the rewards thing.”

“Shit,” he says to himself, before turning around.

Dave’s hand rests on the counter.

“Let me just… ring up your order,” Klaus says. He snaps his fingers and does not know why he does it. 

The iPad that they use for orders and customer receipts and credit card transactions also now does the loyalty rewards app. Klaus punches in the coffee order and plugs in the credit card reader and then the receipt printer, all the while thinking about how he’s going to have to ask Dave for his number. He keeps thinking about the guy from earlier. Even Luther probably wouldn’t intimidate a guy Dave’s size. He’s in the military, for fuck’s sake. But Dave’s a nice guy, Klaus tells himself. He’s a nice guy and he wouldn’t react like that.

“Hey, so, my boss Allison says you stop by in the mornings too,” Klaus says.

“Yeah, but it’s always super busy,” Dave says. 

“Yep, yep, that morning rush,” Klaus says, “she’s a bitch, alright.”

Dave nods his head.

“So, did, uh, did Vanya ring you up this morning?” Klaus asks.

“Vanya? That’s the girl in the tuxedo shirt, right?” Dave asks.

“Yeah!” Klaus says. “Did she, uh, stamp your card for you?” He bobs his head when he talks, moving from side to side. It’s weird even for him, probably.

“No,” Dave says. “Actually sometimes I forget to get my card out in the morning. And it’s so busy, I wouldn’t want to hold up the line.”

Shit, Klaus thinks.

“Well, uh, she wouldn’t have,” Klaus says. “Stamped your card, that is. Cause we’ve changed our loyalty program!”

“Oh,” Dave says. “Cool.”

“It’s kind of dumb, actually super dumb,” Klaus says. “You need to download this app.”

“That’s easy,” Dave says.

“And I have to ask for your name and your phone number,” Klaus says.

And he finds he’s looking really intently at the iPad.

“Cool,” Dave says. “Well, you already know my name.”

He points to the name tag above the pocket on his light blue shirt. It says… Klaus realizes for the first time in months that the badge on Dave’s shirt does not say “Dave.”

It says “Katz.” Which, to be fair, that is only four letters and Dave is four letters and a Z could maybe look like an E. Alright, maybe he’s just not very observant.

“And I’m happy to give you my number. It’s —”

“Uh, wait, I have to pull up the app,” Klaus says. He shakes the iPad. “On this thing.”

“Oh,” Dave says. “Well, I should probably download it then.”

“No, no, you don’t have to,” Klaus says. “I mean you could if you wanted. You can check your points.”

“It’s switching to a points system?” Dave asks.

And now, suddenly, Klaus is very glad for Luther’s stupid twenty-minute explanation because he gets to look into Dave’s blue, blue eyes and talk about earning a point for every dollar spent and being able to redeem that for certain items. The loyalty account can be pulled up by a name or phone number.

“Do you need my birthday, too?” Dave asks, after he’s given Klaus his phone number.

“Yes,” Klaus lies.

“Cool,” Dave says. “It’s July 28th.”

“Wow,” Klaus says. “A Leo.” He makes what’s supposed to be a lion noise, but it sounds too much like a sexy growl. Klaus can only raise his eyebrows at himself.

“I’ve heard that makes me an egomaniac,” Dave says.

Klaus scoffs. “I’m a Libra and you don’t see me being all…” He waves his hand and then pulls it into a fist against his chest. “Just! And righteous!” 

“I don’t know about that,” Dave says.

“He’s not,” Ben says. “By the way, your coffee’s getting cold.”

“Hell,” Dave says. “I should go. Thanks for signing up for the rewards program, Klaus!”

Dave smiles again as he picks up all that coffee and heads out the door.

“See you tomorrow!” Klaus says to his back. Dave half-waves through the window.

Ben punches him in the shoulder as soon as Dave moves out of sight.

“What?” Klaus asks, rubbing his arm through his sleeve, “The fuck?”

“You’ve infected me,” Ben says.

“Infected you?” Klaus says. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means Dave is hot,” Ben says. “And you should text him.”

Klaus stops himself from shoving Ben with both hands, which is what he was going to do right before the words “Dave is hot.”

“But you’re,” Klaus says. “You…”

“I’m ace,” Ben says. “Not dead.”

“That’s kind of ableist, don’t you think?” Klaus says.

“Ableist against who?” Ben asks. “Ghosts?”

“Oh,” Klaus says. “You said dead, not blind. Alright fair, you’re not dead and Dave is a babe. It even rhymes.”

He reaches out and pats Ben’s shoulder instead of shoving him.

“You should text him that,” Ben says. “That exactly.”

“What?” Klaus asks. “No!”

“Text him, ‘Dave, you’re a babe! It even rhymes!’”

“I don’t sound like that,” Klaus whines.

“He said he was happy to give you his number, Klaus,” Ben tells him, as Klaus very slowly goes to the floor on his knees. He just really needs to be horizontal right now.

“He laughs at the dumb shit you say and he thanks you and he always leaves a tip,” Ben says. “And he compliments your stupid shoes.”

“They’re not stupid,” Klaus says, laying on his back with his legs and arms curled up like a dead cockroach. “Dave says they’re cool.”

“Whatever,” Ben says. “Fine, I’ll text him. He’s got that Air Force money. I bet he could pay off my loans and take me to Red Lobster.”

“Fuck,” Klaus says, scrambling to his feet. “I love Red Lobster.”

Ben could just be going to the register, but Klaus knows he isn’t. He definitely isn’t. Split-second decision: Klaus lunges for Ben’s waist.

They hit the floor behind the counter. Klaus’s right heel comes off. Ben elbows him in the sternum. He kicks. Ben kicks. They roll together, until Klaus is on his back again. Then Ben gets up and Klaus tries to roll over and get to his feet. Ben’s knee comes down on the small of his back.

“Fuck!” Klaus shouts. 

This will definitely be on the café’s security footage. Their coworkers are going to see this. Klaus reaches out and grabs onto the shelves behind the counter where they keep all the extra syrup and bags of sugar and tea and weird shit that doesn’t need to be refrigerated.

“I will stand on your throat,” Ben says.

“God, that’s sexy,” Klaus says, feeling his spleen being pressed against the linoleum. 

He grabs the shelves and pulls hard. His apron slides against the floor. Ben slips, because only his one knee is on Klaus. 

Klaus starts to pull himself up on the shelving. His hand lands right by the iPad.

Good, good, this is going exactly as planned.

Ben shoves Klaus up against the counter. His hand lands on the iPad. Ben’s arm goes around his throat and yanks him back.

Klaus yanks on Ben’s arm, but all he gets is fists full of hoodie fabric.

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” he says, kicking his legs out in every direction.

His right foot hits the counter. And oh, yeah, that’s why people wear shoes, isn’t it? Klaus whimpers.

“Hello?” Dave’s beautiful voice says, from the iPad. “Is this The Umbrella Café?”

Ben’s arm tightens around Klaus’ throat so that he for real can’t breathe. He kicks out again with his right foot. He’s getting a hard-on. Klaus gets Ben in the shin with his heel and then he kicks forward and yeah, there’s the counter again. Is his toe broken now? 

The iPad jostles, and then slides off the counter.

“Fuck,” Ben says. He tries to let go of Klaus. Klaus tries to lunge forward.

Neither of them really does either of those things with any success. 

The sound of cracking glass cuts through Klaus’ very soul.

They stare for a moment, before Ben picks the iPad up. 

“Oh, fuck,” he says, with more passion. The screen shows call duration for a FaceTime with Dave’s number. The world starts shaking, or rather Klaus starts shaking so it looks like the world is shaking.

“I’ll call… Shit, who should we call?” Ben asks.

Klaus needs about five minutes to cry a little. And, in that time, Ben has to explain to a very nice customer that their system is down but he’ll put their order in later if they are okay paying cash and not getting a receipt. But then they call Five. He’s the actual manager on duty. 

Luther is nicer, though. They should call Luther or Allison. Luther might not make them pay for it, but also fuck Luther honestly. He will lecture them both about job responsibility for an hour and he’ll probably never let them have a moment’s peace again when he has the late manager shift. Klaus looks at Ben and sees the same vision of Luther lurking as they close the shop together every evening. Allison will yell at them and she will absolutely make them pay for it.

But Five… Five is a bit of a wild card, maybe. Maybe?

In the end, Five is the manager on duty. So he is the manager they call. He comes in and looks at the iPad.

“Well,” he says. “That’s completely fucked, isn’t it?”

“Stop crying,” he tells Klaus. “Jesus, it’s fine. It’s just a computer.”

There’s a replacement in the back, which Five loads and logs in. 

“Is this going to come out of our pay?” Klaus asks, once it’s plugged in.

Five just looks at him.

“So, that’s a ‘no’ then?” Klaus tries.

“No.”

Five kind of makes up for it by taking an order from a woman who wants a large, extra dry, almond-milk latte.

“This is a twenty-ounce drink?” she says, balancing the drink in one hand a large book in the other. “Are you sure?”

“We have a scale if you’d prefer that to your fallible human senses,” Five tells her.

The scale wins and Klaus and Ben enjoy Five saying, “Fucking customers” as soon as she leaves.

“But Five,” Klaus says. “I thought you loved customers!”

“I only love two things,” Five says. “Coffee and Dolores.”

Diego comes in to help close that night and while Ben counts the register, Klaus and Diego have a good natured fight about whether Dolores is a girlfriend or a dog.

“Can you even imagine the kind of girl that Five’d get?” Diego asks. “Like, Five but a chick? No, she’s gotta be a dog.”

“Five could find love,” Klaus says, leaning on the mop handle. “There’s someone out there for everyone, isn’t there?”

“Not for me,” Ben says.

“Shut up, man, you’ve got Klaus,” Diego tells him.

“Yeah!” Klaus says. “You’ve always got me!”

He grins at Ben with his chin on top of his fists. Ben tucks the pencil for the books behind his ear.

“I don’t want you,” he says.

“Hey!” Klaus says.

As they lock up, Diego asks Ben how much it would cost for Ben to draw him something up for a tattoo.

“I’m thinking a kraken,” Diego says. “Like a big fucking sea monster with a bunch of tentacles. That’s my fighter name — The Kraken.”

“Because of the rum?” Klaus asks.

Diego looks at him. “What? There’s a rum? Never mind. No. I don’t do that shit like you do. My body is a temple.”

Diego smacks his own abs. Ben laughs. Klaus frowns. He doesn’t correct Diego; neither does Ben.

“How big would you want it?” he asks, instead. “The more detail, the more it’s gonna cost.”

Klaus knows there’s no use in being hurt by any of it. It’s over. It’s the past. He can’t go back and change anything. He can only take this one day, one hour, one minute at a time. But there have been a lot of fucking minutes in this day, and a lot of them were shitty. When he can, Klaus lets himself have a few minutes, maybe an hour, to listen to The Cure and cry in the bathtub.

He sleeps well, dreaming of things he can’t remember when he wakes up.

The next day, Klaus washes the pots and brews fresh coffee at around a quarter after two. It’s as though he is preparing for Dave’s imminent arrival, but when the windchimes ring he looks over at Ben. Ben sets down his book and looks at Klaus. Then he looks at Dave.

“Hi!” Klaus says. “Long time, no see! How are you today?”

“Can’t complain,” Dave says. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know,” Klaus says, leaning on his elbows. “The usual.”

“What is the usual around here?” Dave asks. “I come twice a day, and I still can’t imagine it.”

“Well, there’s customers,” Klaus says. “And coffee. And crazy people.”

“Shit, I hope that’s not me,” Dave says.

“And cute people,” Klaus adds. “Your regular nine?” 

“Could I get the extra cream with non-dairy creamer?” Dave asks. “Franklin is trying to cut back on sugar.”

“I think the non-dairy shit has more sugar, actually,” Klaus says. “Lemme check.”

He ducks under the counter. There’s a bunch of empty cartons, and he quickly glances over the nutritional values and rattles off the sugar content.

“Uh,” Dave says. “I’m not gonna remember it.”

“I could write it down,” Klaus says.

He gazes up at Dave from the edge of the counter. Dave grins down at him.

“It’s no problem,” Klaus says. “It’ll take like a minute.”

“I really don’t think Franklin’s worth it,” Dave says. “Just give him the regular stuff, but non-dairy.”

Klaus pops back up and gets back to putting the orders in on the iPad. He hooks up the card-reader.

“Am I making the coffee?” Ben asks, lowering his book.

“No!” Klaus says. “I got it!”

The new iPad seems to know that Klaus was responsible for the downfall of its predecessor. He fiddles with it for a while until Ben gets up and starts getting the cups ready. Klaus grabs the card and swipes it and puts in the security code. The purchase goes through after Dave puts in the pin. Klaus swaps out for the receipt printer.

Klaus tears off the receipt and hands it over.

“So, uh,” Dave says, taking the receipt. “Did you FaceTime me yesterday?”

“Sorry,” Klaus says. “It was a software glitch.”

The echo of Ben’s voice falls too perfectly in-sync with Klaus’. When he looks over, Ben is standing near his shoulder.

Dave laughs. “Yeah, I get that. I do.”

Klaus turns around very quickly and takes over the espresso situation.

“Apple products, especially,” Dave continues.

“Yeah,” Ben says.

“Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em,” Dave adds.

“It’s because they’re a monopoly,” Ben says. “They have a stranglehold on the market and they hamstring competition so that it self-destructs — literally.”

Klaus looks over his shoulder and makes a face at the back of Ben’s head. Dave looks at him and he turns quickly back to the espresso. It doesn’t really need this much supervision and, given that it’s Klaus’ supervision, this might actually make worse espresso.

“You’re talking about the Samsung battery thing?” Dave asks. “Are you saying…”

“No, I mean,” Ben says. “Yes, but with market pressure, not actual sabotage.”

“Alright,” Dave says. “I see it. I mean, Apple has a whole thing with the iPhone battery, too, right?”

“Yes! Exactly!” Ben says. “Also the cameras are like five years behind Android.”

“How do you know all this?” Klaus asks. He adds the hot water to the Americano and snaps the lid on. “You have an iPhone too.”

“I didn’t always,” Ben says.

“And you’re bitter about it?” Klaus asks. “Is that what I’m getting?”

“I’m just well informed,” Ben says. “I like... reading.”

“So do I,” Dave says.

“Me too!” Klaus says. “Also, I haven’t had an Android since rehab, but I am bitter about my iPhone. Every time it updates, I swear it’s shittier. Something is always wrong with it.”

“Because you drop it,” Ben says.

“Yes, and it shouldn’t be that fragile!” Klaus insists. He realizes that he’s mentioned rehab, because well, this felt a lot like a conversation with Ben. Also he just does that. Things just slide out of Klaus’ brain and through his mouth to land on the floor like… Well, like a puddle of vomit.

But Dave doesn’t recoil like Klaus puked on his shoes.

“I agree,” Dave says. “Check out this case.”

He takes out his phone and sets it on the counter.

“We have to get you one of those,” Ben says, grabbing Klaus’ arm.

“It looks expensive,” Klaus says. “Also… ugly.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty ugly,” Dave says. “But I mean they come in other colors. I just picked this because it goes with the…” He tugs on his shirt.

Klaus looks at the grey and blue case, heavy grey plastic with some soft blue plastic at the edges, and then he looks at the blue polo shirt Dave wears today with his khaki pants. He nods. He looks at the phone and then back at Dave. He wonders, again, if Dave has any tattoos. He can almost make out the shape of Dave’s chest under the fabric.

“They’ve got to have black,” Ben says, hitting Klaus with his elbow.

Klaus barely moves.

“That’s cool,” he says.

“The breaking thing is definitely a scam, though,” Ben says.

“If you actually send your phone to Apple to get fixed,” Dave says. He picks his phone up and shakes it. “Cheaper sometimes to just get a new one.”

“Exactly,” Ben says.

“Capitalism is the devil,” Klaus says.

He watches Dave for a reaction, fully aware that he delights Ben when he says things like that. If Ben’s parents were alive they would probably want him to be an accountant or a doctor or something, and he probably would’ve done it. He’s smart enough, Klaus knows. He could’ve been one of the tousled hair-having, hot Asian guys who sit in the lounge with their less hot white girlfriends talking about Electric Daisy Carnival and their programming projects. He could be making robots!

“You’re smart enough to make a better phone,” Klaus says, looking at Ben.

“Okay,” Ben says, because none of the thoughts that lead up to that are clear. “But could I make one you couldn’t break?”

“Hmm,” Klaus says, rubbing his thumb against his chin. “Doubtful.”

“Could you at least make one that doesn’t track your location and record you without you knowing?” Dave asks. He sighs. “The OpSec guys send so many panicked emails about iPhones, I can’t have mine at work.”

Klaus makes a pained whimper. He presses his hand to his heart with sympathy. He’s not even on his phone that often — it makes him jittery. But, still, the idea bothers him.

“That I could do,” Ben says.

“Hey,” Klaus says. “Speaking of technical difficulties…”

Ben squints at him, suspiciously.

“Yes?” Dave asks.

“I forgot to input your birthday in our rewards system,” Klaus says. “You’re a Leo, right?”

“Yeah,” Dave says. “July 28.”

“July 28,” Klaus says. “July 28, July 28, July 28. Ben, write that down.”

“Why?” Ben asks.

“For the rewards system, duh,” he says. He looks Ben in the eye and pleads as hard as he can. It’s already May.

“Uh, this is probably… I don’t wanna creep you out, never mind,” Dave says. “It’s weird to ask.”

“What’s weird?” Klaus says. “I like weird shit. Love it.”

Dave laughs. “I was going to ask when your birthday is.”

“Oh,” Klaus says. His brain tries to ask, “What for?” and “That’s all?” at the same time. What comes out is, “What’s all?”

Dave’s brow scrunches up a little and he tilts his head at Klaus.

“October 1st,” Ben says. “Same as mine.”

“We’re birthday twins!” Klaus says, too loudly. He puts an arm around Ben’s waist and yanks him close. “Twinsies! But not Geminis, y’know.”

Dave laughs at his joke — hopefully that’s what he’s laughing at anyway.

“Shit, the coffee’s probably getting cold,” he says, then. “I should, uh… Could I get a carrier?”

Neither Ben nor Klaus got out the usual holders for the nine coffees. They both grab one and Klaus races to unfold his faster than Ben. He spills a little coffee on his hand rushing to get the cups into it. It’s definitely not cold. But Klaus doesn’t even hiss.

“Thank you guys, so much!” Dave says. “For the coffee and the conversation.”

“You’re welcome!” Klaus says, to Dave’s back.

“See you, Klaus!” The door shuts.

When the windchimes finally stop swaying and Dave has long moved out of sight, Ben crosses his arms over his chest and says, “What am I? A ghost?”

Klaus reaches over and pinches him. All he gets is a bunch of hoodie fabric.

“Maybe,” Klaus says. “Can you die of food poisoning?”

“Yes,” Ben says.

“July 28,” Klaus says to himself. He goes to find his phone, with its cracked glass and the glittery stickers on the back. “July 28. July 28.”

By June, Dave is still getting coffee every weekday at The Umbrella Café. Klaus is still taking bubble baths and reading from “Just for Today.” Sometimes, he even writes about Dave in his journal.

“Today I am grateful for:

\- The way Dave’s thighs look in khaki pants.”

The counter he uses clicks over to seven hundred and eleven days.

“Let’s get Slurpies,” Klaus tells Ben.

“Ugh,” Ben says. “I hate tentacles.”

“Let’s get calamari, then,” Klaus says. “Show those fuckers who’s boss.”

The door swings open.

“Hello!” Klaus says. “Welcome to The Umbrella Café! What can I get you?”

“Hi Klaus!” Allison says. “You’re energetic today. Ben, did you remember to clock out for your break?”

“Yes,” Ben says.

She sets down a big roll of paper held together with a cheap rubber band. It makes the most satisfying sound when she rolls it down. She takes some things off the bulletin board. A customer comes in and orders a latte. Klaus tries his best to seem like a competent coffee-slinger.

The late afternoon picks up. Five comes back from his break — wherever he goes, whatever he does — and actually helps. Diego comes to close. Just another day.

“Hey, Allison’s gonna be starring in a play,” Diego says.

“In New York?” Klaus asks.

“In Boston,” Diego says.

“Damn,” Ben says. Klaus whistles.

“So, how’s my tattoo looking?” Diego asks.

“You tell me,” Ben says. Diego comes over to him and Ben leaves the coffee machines to run, full of cleaner.

Klaus mops his way over to the bulletin board. Allison’s poster is framed by flyers for movie clubs and fitness classes. Someone is looking for a lost cat named Mr. Puddles and has made copies of a hand-written sign. In the poster, Allison holds a finger against her lips and winks.

“REALLY REALLY” the title reads.

It’s playing for ten days, including two weekends.

“We have to go,” Klaus says, as Ben locks up. “We have to.”

“Where?” Ben asks. “What?”

“Allison’s play!” he says, grabbing Ben’s arm.

Ben looks at him. “Why?”

They walk toward the bus stop together, with Klaus hanging off of Ben. It’s the end of the day anyway and his heels kind of hurt. They’re too big even when his feet swell.

“Because it’s Allison,” Klaus says. “We have to support her. Plus, you love art.”

“Okay, fine,” Ben says. “How are we getting to Boston?”

“Uber?” Klaus suggests. “Or, uh, hey, I bet Luther is going. He could drive us!”

They go home and eat leftover Italian subs. The wrapper they throw away has the date of purchase written on it in permanent marker. Klaus sits cross-legged on Ben’s bed afterward, holding his ankles with both hands.

“He always asks us how we are,” Klaus says. “He’s such a considerate person!”

“He asks you,” Ben says.

Klaus hums with consideration. “No, he definitely asks you.”

Ben keeps painting without looking at him.

“Anyway, do you ever think about time?” Klaus says. “Like we just move forward all the time and it’s like…”

He keeps going, watching Ben paint.

“I’m tired,” Ben says, around 2 a.m. “And you have onion breath.”

“You have salami breath,” Klaus says. “You know I’m trying to cut back on processed meats.”

“Well, I’m not,” Ben says. “And I like when you don’t eat my leftovers.”

Klaus and Ben look at each other until Ben tugs on the blankets. “Get off my bed.”

With a sigh, Klaus heads to take his bath and tries not to fall asleep in the bubbles.

The next day, they forget to ask Luther. Then, Luther’s off for two days. The poster winks at Klaus every time he comes in to work.

“Hey Luther!” Klaus says, when he comes in to find him on duty. Luther ignores him because he’s with a customer.

“Hey, Luther! Hey!” Klaus says as Luther tucks cash into the register. “Hey!”

More customers come in. The lunch rush is in full effect. Klaus has to actually pour coffee and even go back and get more sandwiches and pasta salads to restock the front. All the while he looks upward, as though trying to peek under his brow bone and into his brain.

“Don’t forget to ask Luther,” he whispers. “Don’t forget to ask Luther.”

When the rush tapers off, Luther washes his hands and turns to Klaus. “Ask me what, Klaus?”

“Can you drive Ben and I — I mean, Ben and me — to Allison’s play in Boston?”  Klaus tugs on the sleeve of his shirt as he talks. It’s short on his wrists and he has to wear it unbuttoned for it to even fit. So maybe it doesn’t actually fit at all.

“You’re going?” Luther asks.

“Yeah! I mean, if you’ll drive us,” Klaus says.

“I didn’t know you were interested in theater,” Luther says.

Klaus laughs. He lifts both his hands and frames his face. The hook from “Vogue” starts playing in his head.

“Do you even know me, Luther?” Klaus asks. “Of course I’m interested in theater. And Ben loves art. We couldn’t be more excited to support Allison, also, because — and I think we can agree on this — she’s the best.”

“Alright,” Luther says. “I believe that Vanya also needs a ride, but you should all fit in my car.”

“Cool!” Klaus says. He pats Luther on his big ol’ bicep. “Thanks, man! You’re the greatest!”

Klaus is still mouthing the lyrics of “Vogue” to himself when Dave arrives for his coffee run. When he leaves, Klaus hears Dave humming the bars of the introduction.


	3. "Congratulations, seriously."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus marks an anniversary and gives some presents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are mentions of sexual assault and references to past drug use in this chapter, but there's also lots of Klaus and Dave being fucking idiots.

The next two weeks before Allison’s play premieres, Klaus goes searching for something new to wear. He digs through the piles of clothing and shoes in his bedroom and creeping out into the rest of the apartment. Deeply unsatisfied by everything he already owns, Klaus must go shopping. He buys the perfect dress at a thrift shop in Arlington.

“You should ask Dave to go to the play with you,” Ben suggests. “He can drive. He’s got a car.”

“Ha!” Klaus says. “Does he look like someone who appreciates the theater?”

Ben’s eyebrows pull together and his mouth looks like a used staple. 

Ben wears a tie, which Klaus helps him with.

“Feels like high school prom all over again,” he says.

“You remember high school prom?” Klaus asks.

“You don’t?” Ben asks. “No, of course you don’t.”

Klaus tries to brush it off, but his hands tremble while he’s trying to do his eyeliner and mascara. He ends up with a big mess and without any time to fix it. He throws a coat over his clothes and heads out with Ben telling him he’s going to make them late. 

Vanya and Luther are wearing suits. Luther looks like a mafia enforcers in pinstripes and a tie that would be wide on anyone with smaller shoulders or a bigger head. Vanya looks like a million fucking dollars.

“Glad I wore a tie,” Ben says. 

He whispers, “Thanks” to Klaus in the back seat.

“Yeah, no problem,” Klaus says. “You look great.”

He is starting to worry that he dressed too flashy. The feeling oscillates inside him, swinging in his belly like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Diego and his girlfriend are also wearing suits and ties. It’s like a uniform, and Klaus hates uniforms. 

Or maybe he’s not wearing his new dress just because he likes it, he fears, but because he wants attention. 

But it’s a restrictive idea that only masculine formal wear is gender-neutral! He’d be a coward if he just gave into that. 

But he’s only doing this because, somehow, he secretly can’t stand that this night is about Allison. It’s his subconscious mind or something.

By the time they get in line to buy tickets, Klaus feels like a wooden cuckoo or some little boys in lederhosen sawing a log will pop out of his mouth. He is full of gears and bells, grinding and chiming.

The last time Klaus saw anything in an actual theater, he was strung out watching the ballet with a mouth so dry it hurt all the way down his tongue. He can remember the way his eyes felt — unable to focus on all the motion and the bright lights. Theaters are so dark, but the lights are so bright.

Oh, this was a bad idea.

Vanya looks over the program. “Wow, I probably should have looked up what this play was about beforehand.”

“Why?” Diego asks.

Klaus cracks open his own program, printed all high-gloss like a magazine. Ben leans over to look at it. They both end up raising their eyebrows.

“I hope Claire won’t be attending this show,” Luther says.

“Wow, Luther, what kind of mom do you think Allison is?” Klaus says. It just comes out of his mouth and he regrets it because first Luther looks all shocked, and then kind of constipated with emotion.

“Come on,” Vanya says. “She wouldn’t. I’m sure Claire is with a babysitter.”

She doesn’t call them idiots, but it’s sort of implied.

“Your friends are sure… something,” Diego’s girlfriend says.

Klaus has definitely met her before and he is trying so hard to remember her name, but it’s just… gone. But he can remember the calm timbre of his rehab counselor’s voice explaining “impaired cognitive functions in the long term.”

Today is certainly happening. This moment is happening. Then the next moment happens. Then the one after that.

The play is about rape. It’s an uncomfortable topic and the play is so deeply, deeply uncomfortable about it that Klaus scootches down in his seat and presses his bare feet to the back of the one in front of him. He has kicked his shoes off.

“Wow, reminds me of my first time,” Klaus whispers to Ben, when Allison’s character gets drunk and sleeps with some fratboy — none of the characters can remember what exactly happened. 

“Too dark,” Ben warns him, and Klaus wants to point out that impulse control and decision making are both impacted by long-term cocaine use.

He tucks his arms around himself, instead, and wishes that he could have a cigarette.

The weird look in Vanya’s eyes says she doesn’t want to come back after intermission, but Diego’s girlfriend puts a hand on her shoulder and whispers something to her. It’s a girl moment. Klaus envies that shit. Ben just stands around with his hands in his pockets and Luther stares at his shoes.

“Well, this is rough,” Diego says.

The second act gets rougher. Like it’s funny. Parts of it are supposed to be funny, obviously. Klaus laughs. He remembers laughing, afterwards.

“Let’s wait for Allison,” Luther says. “So she knows we came to see the play.”

“That’s a great idea,” Vanya says. “I think she’d really like that.”

Klaus feels suddenly hideous with guilt. Vanya is a fucking orchestral musician and Klaus has never gone to her performances. They’re always when he has to work, he thinks, but that’s a really shitty excuse. He takes out his phone and makes a note to himself.

“That’s a really lovely dress,” Diego’s girlfriend says, while Klaus is typing the word “orchestra.”

“What?” he asks. He still wants a cigarette. Or a joint.

“Your dress,” she says. “It’s gorgeous.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “Thanks. It’s vintage. It’s got a cape.”

Her eyes widen. “Really?”

“Also,” she adds. “I’m really sorry. I know we met before, but I don’t remember your name.”

Diego’s girlfriend is a cop so she probably hasn’t done a lot of drugs in her life, though who knows with cops.

“I’m Klaus,” he says.

“Nice to meet you again, Klaus,” she says. “Call me Patch.”

“Aw, come on, Eudora, my friends don’t get to be on first-name basis?” Diego says.

She turns and looks at him. “No.”

“So,” Patch says, turning back to Klaus. “Who’s your boyfriend?”

He thinks immediately of Dave.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Klaus says.

“Oh shit,” Patch says. She covers her mouth with her hand. “I am so sorry.”

“Wait a minute,” Diego ways. “Ben? You thought Ben was Klaus’ boyfriend?”

She elbows Diego in the stomach. Ben materializes about four inches from Klaus’ shoulder and almost makes him jump out of his skin.

“Klaus wishes he could get with me,” Ben says.

“You snore,” Klaus says. “And you have chronic meat-breath. No one wants to get with you.”

“And that’s just how I want it,” Ben says, patting Klaus’ shoulder.

“You know who Klaus really wants to get with?” Diego says.

“I should show you the cape on this dress!” Klaus says. He throws off his coat against the chill of the night. The dress is a sort of dark cherry satin, with a slight lipstick stain on the shoulder. It’s got ruching on the bosom so Klaus doesn’t have the disappointment of empty cups sagging against his very bony chest. The batwing sleeves are sheer, with buttoned up cuffs at his wrists. The cape matches the sleeves. Klaus spreads his arms out so Patch can see, while Diego keeps trying to talk to her.

“Wow!” she says. “I could never wear something like that.”

“Of course you could,” Klaus says. “If I can wear it, you absolutely can.”

She laughs. She is totally ignoring Diego, and Klaus can only smirk about it when Diego glares at him.

“Hey,” Ben says. “So when I was in the bathroom, I think I saw, uh, Dave, if you can believe it,.”

“Oh, you were in the bathroom?” Klaus asks, ignoring the sudden cold that runs down his back. He pulls his coat back on.

“Yep,” Ben says.

They’re already outside and Klaus can’t just leave. He can’t drive and he can’t afford a late night Uber out of the city. Everyone would notice. They’d probably think he was doing drugs. He plays with the buttons on his coat, runs his fingers along the seams between its different colored patches. He strokes the fur on his cuffs.

“Are you okay?” Ben asks.

Vanya and Luther are talking quietly about the play. They say Allison’s name again and again, like it’s something precious and soft. Allison, Allison, Allison. Diego tries to put his arm around Patch and squeeze her, which she keeps escaping. She steps on his insole and he laughs.

“Fine,” Klaus says. “Just dandy.”

“I didn’t see his penis,” Ben says. “And he didn’t see mine.”

“Unnecessary, but alright,” Klaus says. 

“It looked like you were thinking something weird. Anyway, it was probably Dave,” Ben says. “I thought you’d want to know.”

Klaus pulls his phone out of his pocket again. He finishes the note about Vanya — “See orchestra perfomance.” He fixes his typo. He exits the notes app. He opens his countdown. Seven hundred and twenty seven days. In the morning it will be seven hundred and twenty eight.

Three hundred and sixty five times two is… Ten carry the one. A hundred and twenty plus that one is one hundred and thirty. Carry that one! Seven hundred and thirty. Two years, then, if he can make it through the weekend. 

He puts his phone away so he can stop thinking about it, but he doesn’t stop thinking about it. He wants a cigarette so badly he could punch Diego for one. Not Luther, cause he doesn’t want to die. And not Ben, because… Ben. Well, no, maybe if Ben… What could Ben do to make Klaus willing to punch him for a cigarette? Use his shoes for an art project? Spill turpentine on his favorite pile of laundry? Tell him he’ll never trust him and he could never love someone as fucked up as Klaus? (He wouldn’t be the first.)

Okay, yeah, that.

Klaus shoves his hands in his coat pockets. He crosses and uncrosses his arms. He tucks his hands behind his back and pulls the coat with them. He sees Dave walking right up to him.

“Klaus?” Dave asks.

Klaus’ left heel wobbles a little on the ground.

“Wow, this is like… everybody, isn’t it?” Dave says, looking around.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Almost.”

Dave nods.

He looks away from Ben, eyes back on Klaus. Klaus can hear how all his friends — his coworkers, his people who have known him sober for almost two years, his _people_ — have gone quiet.

“Sorry,” Dave says. “Is it weird for me to…?”

“Nope!” Klaus says. “Not weird at all. Hi, hello, did you like the play?”

“It was… bleak,” Dave says. “But your boss was amazing. I know maybe we’re not supposed to trust her character, but I really did.”

“Me too,” Klaus says. “But I’m dumb, I mean, I just trust Allison on an instinctual level because of her excellent fashion sense and hair.”

“You’re not dumb,” Dave says.

Klaus snorts.

“So, who couldn’t make it?” Dave asks. “I don’t really know anyone at the shop better than you two.”

“Five,” Ben says.

“He’s allergic to fun,” Klaus says. “And joy and artistic expression. He only likes math and coffee.”

Dave smiles. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“One time he heard a song and starting nodding his head to it and next thing you know,” Klaus holds a hand up to his throat and starts gagging. “Anaphylactic shock.”

Dave laughs out loud and Klaus can’t help but smile. He’s wearing his blue button-up shirt with long sleeves. But no name tag! And no tie! The two buttons at the top are open and he’s not wearing an undershirt so Klaus can see just a little tiny bit of cleavage. And he _is_ looking.

“What song was it?” Dave asks.

“Hip to be Square,” Klaus says.

Dave laughs so hard that Klaus could count all his teeth if he were actually good at math. They’re such white, straight teeth. He looks like he flosses. He looks like he’s never even heard of coffee or looked at a cigarette.

“Holy shit, Klaus,” Dave says. “You’re even funnier outside work.”

“Thank you,” Klaus says. He holds his coat out and curtseys.

“And your dress is… wow,” Dave says.

“Good wow?” Klaus asks. “Bad wow? Bow wow?”

“Definitely a good wow,” Dave says. “You’re way too fashionable for Boston. You should be in New York or something.”

Klaus shrugs. “I don’t really care for New York.”

“That’s fair,” Dave says. He doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t even look like he wants to.

“Dave!” someone shouts from the distance. “What are you doing? Get your ass back here!”

Dave looks over his shoulder. “Gotta go,” he says. “It was nice to see you, Ben, everybody. Really nice to see you, Klaus.”

He waves as he turns and Klaus watches his shoulders. He lets out a sigh that sounds kind of like a woof.

When he looks, everyone from the café is staring at him.

“So,” Patch says. “Was _that_ your boyfriend?”

“No,” Klaus says. “That was Dave.”

She narrows her eyes at him in the same way that Diego does. Did she get it from him? Did he get it from her? Were they drawn together by the universe because, completely independently, they squint the same way when suspicious?

“Luther?” Allison’s voice asks. “Vanya? What are you guys doing here?”

She’s wearing a jumpsuit made of some flowy, patterned fabric. It cinches at the waist so she looks like a fashion mechanic. Her heels are bright yellow. Klaus loves them.

“We came to see you,” Vanya says.

Allison smiles. “Really? All of you? Who’s… Oh, Five? All by himself?”

“He offered,” Luther says. “And I know it’s against policy, so I told him to just close early instead.”

“That’s sweet,” Allison says.

“Are those from Patrick?” Luther asks, and Allison lifts the small bouquet of roses in her hand. She rests it against her breasts.

“No,” she says. “The director. Patrick… is with Claire.”

“That’s no reason for him not to send flowers,” Klaus blurts out. “Not that we brought you flowers either.”

“But you’re here,” Allison says. “That means more than some dead roses.”

She wants to know what everyone thought of the play, and to give hugs. “You can tell me if I was awful. I won’t dock your pay.”

“Legally, you can’t,” Ben says.

“You were amazing,” Klaus tells her. “You’re the next Lupita Nyong’o.”

She squeezes him too tight. Her hair smells so good and she’s very tall in her heels so Klaus has his whole face full of that smell. Her breasts press against his flat chest, even though she’s sort of cracking his ribs.

“Klaus,” she says. “You’re such a fucking liar.”

“Even Dave liked the play,” Klaus says.

“Who’s Dave?” Allison asks. She holds Klaus around the waist still as she gives him a puzzled look.

“Blond Air Force guy customer,” Ben says.

“Oh!” Allison says. “Oh! Dave was here? Did you bring him?”

“No!” Klaus says. “He has free will! And a car! Luther drove me; I can’t even go to Boston without adult supervision.”

“A customer came to see the play?” Allison says. “Shit.”

She pulls away and moves toward Ben. “But Klaus, that means he’s a keeper! He likes theater!”

“Hey! That rhymes,” Klaus says.

“He’s a keeper, he likes theater,” Klaus mutters to himself. Klaus isn’t sure he likes theater. Does that mean he’s not a keeper? Well, obviously he isn’t anyway and no appreciation for the arts is likely to change that.

“I want a cigarette,” Klaus says, when Allison is done hugging him.

“You want me to pinch you?” Ben asks.

“No! Fuck!” Klaus says. “It really hurts when you do that. No, I want… I want to hold hands or something.”

“Okay,” Ben says. He grabs Klaus’ “Hello” hand, and he holds it until they have to get in the car.

And then he holds it as he’s falling asleep on the ride back to their apartment building. Klaus’ palm sweats. Ben’s hand feels too hot in his. But he’s grateful when Ben wakes up and doesn’t pull away. He also doesn’t wipe his hand on his pants getting out of Luther’s car.

“Hey,” Ben says, as Klaus drapes his coat over some laundry in the living room. “If you wear some pajamas, you can stay in my bed tonight.”

“Aw, but why do I have to wear clothes?” Klaus asks.

“Because you’re always damp after your baths and it makes you stick to me,” Ben says. “More than usual.”

After a bath, Klaus puts on a soft crop top, a thrift shop find, that advertises some beach spot in Jersey. He wears Ben’s sweatpants, too, and they hang low on his hips but fall short of his ankles.

“You look so weird,” Ben says. His T-shirt has ink stains and his sweatpants have a rip in the crotch.

“Easy access,” Klaus says, pointing it out.

Ben sketches ocean waves and tentacles in bed beside him. With his head resting against Ben’s ribs, Klaus watches things take shape on paper. It feels like magic, like a superpower, creating something out of graphite residue on pulped wood and fiber mashed flat.

“Sleep well, Ben,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Ben says, but it could be a dream.

In the morning, Ben wakes him up by getting out of bed. The sweatpants have climbed up over Klaus’ knees and he’s pulled one arm out of the crop top sleeve so it goes out through the neck somehow.

“Morning,” Ben says.

“I want pancakes,” Klaus says. He knows Ben can’t make pancakes. Ben can’t cook at all.

About two weeks later, Ben says, “Hey, hasn’t it been like two years since you got out of rehab?”

“Since I went in,” Klaus says. “Yep, sober for two whole years. Today is… Seven hundred and forty one days.”

Ben looks at him for a moment, like he’s thinking.

“Klaus,” he says, “what the fuck? Why didn’t you say something?”

Klaus shrugs. He picks at the snagged thread coming out of one of the flowers on his blouse.

“Didn’t want to jinx it, I guess,” he says.

Dave is late or not coming today. He could be sick. He could be dead. 

Ben slaps his hand against Klaus’ shoulder, hard enough to make him jolt.

“What?” Klaus asks.

“Let’s order a pizza,” Ben says.

“At work?” But, of course, Ben means right now. He doesn’t need to say it. Neither of them does. “God, you’re a genius, Ben. I’m so glad we’re friends.”

“Thank you,” Ben says. “Also, my treat, obviously.”

“I want pineapple!” Klaus says. “And green pepper!”

Ben sighs. “You disgust me.” But he takes his phone out and places the order — two medium pizzas, one with all the meats and another with all the vegetables _and_ pineapple. The delivery girl is their only customer since the lunch rush and she asks for a caramel latte, which she pays for with the tip Ben gives her from the café’s tip jar.

Klaus puts his bare feet on the comfy chair by the back wall and happily eats two slices of pizza.

“I’m proud of you,” Ben says.

“Thanks, dad,” Klaus says.

Klaus takes a piece of meat pizza and picks off all the sausage. Ben takes a piece of veggie pizza and picks off all the pineapple, while frowning.

“We should not be getting paid for this,” Klaus says.

“Let’s count it as our break,” Ben tells him.

Then, the chime over the door jingles.

With his arms draped over his knees and a piece of pizza hanging out of his mouth, Klaus looks up and sees Dave. He panics for only a fraction of a second and then springs into action. Pizza down. Shoes on. 

“Hi, Dave,” he says. “How’s it going? Can I get the usual for you?”

His boot laces are dragging on the floor and he might not be wearing them at all properly. He just sort of shoved his feet in and went.

“Can I get two Americanos, actually?” Dave asks.

“Oh, the morning order?” Klaus says. “Sure, no problem.”

Dave laughs. “Yeah, it figures you’d know that too.”

Suddenly, Klaus feels like a massive creep. His stomach goes hard, clenching around four slices of pizza.

“The customer service here is… wow,” Dave says. “And you’re the best of the best! But yeah, my boss is dying. We’re trying to organize this big training and she’s got a migraine.”

Klaus holds his hand frozen over the iPad. “The best of the best?” he mouths silently.

“Okay, so, two large Americanos, plus eight medium coffees — one with extra cream, two with sugar, and two with cream and sugar,” Klaus says.

“Perfect,” Dave says. “You have a great memory.”

“Thank you,” Klaus says, without looking up. “You know, that second Americano is not going to be as good as the first.”

“I don’t think she cares,” Dave says. “If she wanted really fresh espresso, she’d come get her coffee herself.”

Klaus snorts.

“Hey, Klaus!” Ben says. “I’ll take care of the coffee.”

“Thanks,” Klaus says. He runs Dave’s card — actually Dave’s work’s card. Dave puts a whole five dollar bill in the tip jar.

“So,” Klaus says. “How’s the organizing going?”

Dave sighs and leans against the counter. “Absolute clusterfuck. I mean, it always is, but every year they gotta change things, which means we can never use anything we did last year.”

“Yikes,” Klaus says.

“It fucking sucks,” Dave says. “And I know I’ll be in the office forever helping edit video and budgeting and shit. That’s not what I trained for at all. This is _not_ what I signed up for. But it’s not like I have a choice, or I guess, I already made my choice. I enlisted, so…” 

He shrugs and Klaus sighs a little, because wow those shoulders. That worried little groove between his eyebrows. The pout of his lips, even!

“Sorry for boring you,” Dave says.

“I’m not bored,” Klaus says. “Like, at all.”

“Hey,” Ben says. “Looks like we’re short on fresh coffee. Are you good to wait?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Dave says. “It would be nice to sit down on something that’s not my damn office chair.”

“There’s pizza,” Ben says.

“Yeah!” Klaus says. He claps his hands together. Why does he clap his hands? “We’ve got pizza! Have some pizza, Dave.”

“Oh,” Dave says. “Okay.”

“I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t like pizza and we got, I suppose, weird toppings,” Klaus says. “How do you feel about pineapple on pizza? It can be a rather divisive issue.”

“Fuck pineapple on pizza,” Ben says. 

Dave laughs. “Uh, I’ve never tried it. Seems like it could be weird, cause it’s fruit, but tomatoes are technically a fruit, right?”

Klaus thinks he’s heard that, but he’s only heard it. It’s not like he could say for sure, which just makes him feel stupid. Why isn’t a tomato a vegetable? He’s not sure.

“I’d like to try it,” Dave says.

Klaus leads him over to the seats by the back and gestures broadly at the cooling, half-eaten pizzas spread out on the table.

“Yeah, I’m definitely only having the pineapple one,” Dave says.

“Vegetarian?” Klaus asks.

“Jewish,” Dave says.

“Ooooh,” Klaus says. “That’s cool.”

Dave smiles at him. “If you say so.”

They sit and Klaus picks up his unfinished piece of pizza. He kicks his boots off again, but politely tucks his feet under himself in the chair. He mumbles a sorry.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Dave says. “Be comfortable.”

So Klaus takes the biggest bite he can just to keep himself from saying anything stupider. Dave looks at the piece of veggie pizza he picks out and then looks at Klaus before he takes a bite. Klaus watches him. He closes his eyes when he chews. He makes a noise like he’s considering it.

“It’s not sweet like I thought,” Dave says. “Kind of… tangy?”

“Yeah!!” Klaus says, and he grins. His mouth is still full of pizza. Dave laughs and takes another bite.

“So,” Dave says. “Do you guys usually do this? Or is it a special occasion?”

Klaus swallows. “We’re celebrating. At least, I think we are.”

He turns his head and shouts, “Ben, are we celebrating?”

“Yes, idiot!” Ben shouts back.

“What’s the occasion?” Dave asks. He picks up a napkin to wipe his mouth before taking another bite. It’s charming. Klaus should have known there would be a follow-up question. And he knows he should be honest. That’s part of sobriety — being honest with himself and others. Besides, if it bothers Dave then Dave really isn’t worth all the butterflies Klaus gets when he sees him walk into the café.

“Two years of sobriety,” Klaus says.

“Wow,” Dave says. “That’s a real accomplishment.”

Klaus says a quiet, “Thank you.” Then he gets really busy eating pizza again.

Dave finishes his piece and wipes his fingers on a napkin. Klaus stays quiet, picking up another piece of pizza and then putting it down.

“Maybe it’s weird to say,” Dave tells him, “but I wish we could be friends. You’re just such an interesting, surprising person, Klaus. Maybe the coolest person I’ve ever met.”

“I used to do meth,” Klaus blurts out.

Dave blinks. “Is that supposed to make you seem less interesting or surprising?”

“I don’t know,” Klaus says, but what he means is, “You’re not supposed to like me after you know that. You’re not supposed to want to be my _friend_ , of all things.” Also, he didn’t want Dave to think he was just an alcoholic or something.

“Okay, well,” Dave says. “It doesn’t and, uh, well, deep, dark, pizza-fueled confession? I enlisted so I wouldn’t be homeless. But sometimes I don’t think it was worth it.”

Klaus sits and blinks.

“The coffee’s done,” Ben says, loudly. “And your order’s ready.” 

Klaus stays frozen in place. He looks off somewhere into space. Dave is, like, a whole person. He’s a whole person who wishes he was Klaus’ friend.

“Congratulations,” Dave says. “Seriously.”

And then he takes his coffee and he goes. Klaus finishes his pizza.

“You all better have left me some more pizza,” Ben says. “I’m gonna finish it for dinner.”

“Allison was right,” Klaus says.

“Oh, good,” Ben says. “You didn’t.”

On July 28th, Klaus goes to Grace’s catering company before work. It’s just a few blocks from the café.

“Good morning, Klaus,” she says the moment she sees him. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” Klaus says.

“Does the café need more sandwiches today?” she asks, wiping her hands on her apron. Her heels click against the floor where Klaus can’t see them.

“No, I mean, I don’t know,” he says. “I was wondering do you have any sweets like… uh, cake maybe?”

“Aw, handsome, you know this isn’t a restaurant,” she says. “But, I’ll see what I can find in the back.”

“It’s not for me, actually,” he says. “It’s my, uh, friend’s birthday?”

“Oh, Klaus, that’s so sweet!” She smiles at him and her lipstick is so perfect and so red.

He stands in the small front of the store, where people usually just pick up their catering orders and pay. He looks through the menus he’s seen a million times before, appreciating the 1940s diner aesthetic, with black and white checkerboard patterns and smiling cartoon faces.

“Does your friend like muffins?” Grace asks.

“I… maybe?” Klaus says. “Are they kosher muffins?”

Grace blinks. “I’m not too sure. But they _are_ chocolate chip. I had a few extra.”

“Perfect! I’ll take it,” Klaus says.

“Consider it a gift,” she says. “Sweets for the sweet.”

Grace winks at him. “Since any friend of yours must be just as sweet as you are, Klaus.”

He blushes. Diego regularly picks up the catering and for a moment Klaus wonders how he could get assigned that job. But it involves getting up super early every day, so Klaus knows he couldn’t do it. Between the early morning errands, his MMA training, and helping close most nights, Diego must get like three hours of sleep a night. Klaus needs his sweet, sweet beauty rest.

“You’re late,” Ben says, when Klaus gets to the café. He’s by himself and there is a line.

“Where’s everyone else?” Klaus asks. “Where’s a manager?”

Ben rolls his eyes. The customers look annoyed, in that specific and caffeine-deprived way. Bar customers aren’t like this! But they’ve also never had a stabbing at The Umbrella Café, so Klaus will accept it. He takes over the coffee-making and even helps Ben convince a woman that they absolutely don’t sell or serve Oatly Oat Milk.

“Have you tried Whole Foods?” Klaus suggests.

“Of course I’ve tried Whole Foods,” the woman says, before leaving in a huff.

After almost an hour, Ben finally asks, “Why is there a muffin in the sandwich cooler?”

Klaus smiles.

“All right then,” Ben says, “keep your secrets.”

“Did you just meme on me?” Klaus asks. Ben only smiles.

There are other customers — it’s an oddly busy afternoon. Klaus hopes it won’t stay this busy. He talks to himself, practicing what he’ll say to Dave.

“I hope you like chocolate chip muffins too!”

“Surprise! Happy birthday!”

“Since we’re _friends_ and all, I thought...”

Ben looks at him and narrows his eyes. “Oh, that’s what the muffin’s about.”

Then, Dave actually arrives. He holds the door for a woman with two hyperactive children who wanted hot chocolate in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. She doesn’t even say “Thank you”!

The worst part about it being a Saturday is that Dave might not have showed up. Then Klaus was going to have to save the muffin until Monday — or, more likely, just eat it himself. 

The best part about it being a Saturday is that Dave is wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. He’s got his sleeves rolled up just a little and something tucked under his arm along with a black leather jacket.

“Lookin’ good!” Klaus blurts out, and Dave smiles.

Ben steps back from the register and goes to wash the milk carafes.

“We need fresh coffee,” he says. “Hi, Dave!”

“Hi Ben,” Dave says.

Time seems to slow down as Dave walks up and looks Klaus dead in the eye. He’s still smiling. “Hi, Klaus.”

“Hi,” Klaus says. “What can I get you?”

“Just a medium coffee, today,” Dave says. “Thanks.”

Klaus’ stomach twists up as he looks at the iPad. He doesn’t look up at Dave.

“Hey, today’s your birthday, isn’t it?” he says.

“Yeah!” Dave says.

“Well,” Klaus says. He looks up and makes what is definitely a weird face. He’s smiling too much. “Happy birthday!”

Dave smiles back. “Thank you.”

“We are doing… wait no, we’re trying out this thing where there’s a special reward,” Klaus starts. “Anyway.”

He pulls open the back of the sandwich cooler and pulls out the muffin.

“Do you like chocolate chips?” he asks, like he doesn’t know already. “And do you like muffins?”

“Yes!” Dave says. “Man, I really do.”

“Well congratulations, here is your free chocolate chip birthday muffin,” Klaus says.

“And here’s your medium coffee,” Ben says. “It’s on the house.”

“You guys,” Dave says. “You shouldn’t —”

“You’re our favorite customer,” Klaus says.

Ben slides right up behind Klaus and says, “Especially Klaus’.”

The sound that Klaus makes is supposed to be a laugh.

“Well, thank you,” Dave says. “I was already having a pretty good birthday, but this makes it the best. Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Not at all,” Klaus says, drawling his consonants too much. He gets all limp-wristed and then shakes his hand and glares at it. How dare it betray him like this?

“Thanks!” Dave says, like he’s got a compulsion to be grateful. The way Klaus apparently has a compulsion to bullshit instead of be honest.

He turns around and sighs.

“Go take your break,” Ben says, very quietly. “Talk to him.”

“About what?” Klaus hisses.

Ben shrugs, but he gets back to making coffee. Klaus pulls some espresso and makes himself a mocha. He thought he looked good this morning when he left the apartment. Normally he goes for tight pants or leggings, but these harem pants are so _accommodating_. Even if they’re an ugly olive drab. When he bought them, he thought maybe the color brings out his eyes? But now he just thinks about how they’re women’s harem pants and fall a little short and a little tight on his calves. His boots don’t go up high enough to reach and he has them half unlaced anyway.

Still, Grace called him sweet.

He takes a sip of the mocha. Dave peels back the paper and bites into the oversized muffin.

Klaus walks out around the counter.

“Hey,” he says.

Dave smiles at him. He’s got muffin crumbs in the corner of his mouth. “Hey.”

“I’m on break,” Klaus says. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” Dave says. “Please, help yourself.”

Klaus pulls out the opposite chair and slouches into it, as he does with most chairs. He fights the urge to kick off his boots and put his feet on the table. Really? Where Dave is eating?

Dave rests his elbows on the table.

“So,” Klaus says. “What birthday is it?”

“Uh,” Dave says, still eating. “The big two-seven.” So, he’s younger than Klaus. Twenty-seven is when Klaus went to rehab. He tries to smile.

“How old are you?” Dave asks.

“Twenty-nine,” Klaus says.

“Wow,” Dave says. “You do not… I mean, you look… Uh.”

“Haggard?” Klaus says. “Don’t worry, I know.”

“No!” Dave says. He sets down his muffin. There’s a bit of chocolate on his upper lip and Klaus finds himself staring at it.

“You look good!” Dave says. “I mean, you look so young! Like, twenty three. I thought I was too old for you, for sure.”

“Aw, thanks,” Klaus says. “You’re… too sweet. Twenty three? Really?”

Klaus can’t even think about what a mess he was when he was twenty three. He barely remembers it. Was that New York? Or was he already in Los Angeles? Maybe he was in Europe? Ah, Ibiza was great. Berlin, too! Probably, at least. He can’t really remember anything except the booze, the food, and the drugs. 

“Just being honest,” Dave says.

“So, how’s the muffin? What are you hiding under the jacket?” Klaus says. He picks up his mocha so he’ll stop badgering Dave with questions while he’s trying to eat the muffin.

Dave chews for a moment, clearly trying to rush. “It’s great! And…” He reaches down and picks up his jacket. Underneath is a slightly scratched, but still gleaming motorcycle helmet. It looks like a scarab beetle, huge and black and shiny. Klaus blinks. And blinks.

“Signed the contract and made the first payment last month,” Dave says. “But haven’t been able to take her out until this weekend. My birthday gift to myself.”

“A muffin just doesn’t compare,” Klaus says. He feels like his stomach is going to fall out his ass. He finds his whole posture shifting so he can press his thighs together in his loose harem pants.

“But it’s chocolate chip,” Dave says. “That’s the best kind.”

“What’s it like?” Klaus says. And Dave somehow knows what he’s really asking. He smiles and his gaze gets distant.

“It’s like flying,” Dave says. He sighs.

“I’d like to do that,” Klaus says, after a while. His voice is quiet. Dave looks at him and then looks at his coffee. Klaus rubs his hands on his thighs. He looks down. He lets his knees fall apart again.

They’re quiet for a while and Klaus can only think that he’s fucked up. He’s said and done all the wrong things and now Dave is uncomfortable and doesn’t even know how to tell him. Dave just looks down at the table and then up at him and then at the muffin. He looks weirdly flushed, like all the sugar is getting to him. Klaus scratches his head and then tries to fix his hair, where a too-long curl has pulled apart into a hundred hairs going different directions because it got caught on a ragged fingernail. He chews on the fingernail, then realizes Dave is looking at him and drops his hands into his lap.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Uhm,” Dave says. “Thanks for the muffin and, uh, the conversation.”

“What conversation?” Klaus wants to ask.

“Maybe if you’re free one weekend,” Dave says. “You could check out my bike, maybe go for a ride. On my motorcycle.”

“Oh!” Klaus says. “I don’t drive. Like, anything. And I’m never off on the weekend. But thanks!” He laughs too much.

After he leaves, Ben comes over and sits in Dave’s chair.

“You really blew that,” he says. “Wow.”

“We are so fucked if he tells people we give out muffins,” Klaus says.

Ben reaches all the way across the table and pats Klaus’ shoulder.

“We don’t even sell muffins,” Klaus says.

“That’s your problem,” Ben says.

Ben gets up and walks away and Klaus throws his bare arms over the table top. He bangs his nose and forehead on the table while trying to dramatically slump down. It hurts.

For the next few days, though, Dave thanks Klaus again for the muffin. Klaus starts to hope that Dave saw through his weird shit and understood that Klaus just wanted to wish him a happy birthday. Like, really, does Klaus seem that much like a coffee shop pawn? He doesn’t even like wearing shoes.

Then around eight on a Thursday, just after Diego walks in the door and frightens an undergrad studying by the window, a woman comes in wearing one of the Air Force polos.

“Hi!” Klaus says.

“Hi,” she says. She stops and looks around. “Wow, this place is really different at night.”

“Is it?” Klaus asks. “I wouldn’t know, I only work nights.”

“I used to get coffee in the mornings,” the woman says. “For my office.”

Klaus doesn’t like where this is going and Ben moves in close for moral and, possibly, physical support.

“So, uh, the morning shift usually wears aprons,” she says.

“Are you going to order?” Ben asks.

“Yeah,” Klaus says. “What can we get for you?”

“Oh,” she says. “I don’t actually like coffee _at all_. But I have a membership and it’s my birthday.”

Klaus looks right past her and absolutely does not look at Ben or the undergrad or Diego. Wow that coffee harvesting mural that he helped Ben paint last year is holding up well. That’s a great shade of red they picked.

“My coworker said you do a thing with —” she starts.

“I am so sorry,” Klaus says. “We had to end the birthday rewards program.”

“Yes,” Ben says. “We have a lot of customers who weren’t willing to give their birthdays.”

“And we really can’t predict if people will actually come in,” Klaus says. “That’s a lot of stale muffins.”

“We can’t even eat them,” Ben says. “We had to throw them away.”

“So many muffins,” Klaus says.

The woman looks concerned, either by the absolute fucking bullshit that Klaus and Ben just spewed at her, or by how insistent they are. Klaus makes his saddest face — his “I’m so sorry I took your wallet and also your jewelry and also the stereo system and I’ll pay you back as soon as I can, but I don’t have anywhere to sleep and I’m really going through a hard time right now” face. It kind of aches to make, because he hasn’t done it in so long and there are a lot of muscles in the forehead that have to be used.

“That sucks,” the woman says. “I’ll let our office know. I mean, it’s really only Dave and me who have the memberships. Oh, and the CO. But I don’t know if she eats food.”

“She sounds like an interesting lady,” Klaus says. “Can I interest you in a cup of tea?”

“You sound British when you say that,” the woman says. She giggles.

Klaus makes a face. “Gross.” He twists away from the counter.

“He’s not,” Ben says. “What kind of tea, miss?”

“Do you have any green teas?”

Klaus puts one of the apple-y imported green teas into a cup and pours boiling hot water over it. He pops the little plastic lid on the cup.

“It’ll be ready in four minutes,” he says. She walks out the door with a smile, and Diego comes to lean over the counter.

“What’s all this about muffins?” he asks. “Grace told me she gave you one for a friend’s birthday on the weekend.”

“Wow,” Klaus says. “That is a blatant violation of my privacy, Diego. Please tell her that I am deeply, deeply wounded.”

“Klaus fucked up his shot with Dave,” Ben says.

“Oh man,” Diego says. “I gotta hear this.”

“I did not fuck it up!” Klaus says. “I wasn’t even trying to take a shot.”

“Yes, you were,” Ben says. “He told Dave it was for a birthday rewards program.”

Diego throws his head back and laughs hard. He points at Klaus. “You, shut up.”

“You,” he points at Ben, “Keep talking. I want every detail.”

Ben smiles. “It’s good to be appreciated.”

“I hate you both so much,” Klaus tells them.

Ben steps out and puts a conspiratorial hand on Diego’s shoulder.

“I know I can trust you,” Diego says. “The tattoo looks amazing. Have I shown it to you? It healed really well.”

“Yes,” Ben says. “But please, let me see my art on your tits again.”

Diego lifts up his shirt. “Klaus, did you see?”

The undergrad leans around to try to get a look.

“Anyway, tell me about how Klaus fucked up,” Diego says. He tucks his shirt back in.

“So Klaus comes in late that day carrying a muffin,” Ben starts.

The story is actually exceedingly boring and Klaus tunes it out. His face getting hot has nothing to do with Ben describing the way he looks at Dave — “Like a star-struck, thirteen-year-old girl who’s forgotten how to blink.”

The thing is that Klaus has been working on being honest. And now he’s telling big, stupid lies for no reason. He feels guilty. He taps his fingers against his thighs, then against the counter. He touches the back of the sandwich cooler. He walks around touching the parts of the espresso machines, the metal tins of tea and coffee beans, the cabinet doors.

“If I can’t even act right sober,” he says. “What’s the point.”

It makes his blood run cold.

That night, when Klaus meets Ben back up at the bus stop carrying tonight’s takeout dinner, he says, “I think I should go back to meetings.”

He feels his whole body tense up as he speaks.

“Cool,” Ben says. “That’s probably a good idea.”

Klaus sighs.

“I mean,” Ben says. “You need people, Klaus. Like more than just me. I suck.”

“You don’t suck,” Klaus says. “Jesus.”

“That’s not a guilt thing,” Ben says. “I make you do my laundry and yell at you for taking too long in the bathroom. I can’t cook.”

“I eat all your food,” Klaus says.

“I leave art supplies on your bed,” Ben says.

“Art supplies? You leave broken fucking exacto blades everywhere!” Klaus says.

“Well,” Ben says. “Maybe you should wear shoes more often.”

“Even you don’t wear shoes in the apartment,” Klaus says.

“Maybe I should,” he says. Then they both shudder and laugh.

The bus is ten minutes late and their takeout is cold by the time they get to the apartment. 

“It’ll be better heated in a pan,” Klaus insists. Washing a frying pan and some actual plates assuages a little of the guilt that drags him down all the time lately. He can’t even pay half the rent. He wastes his money on clothes and shoes and dumb shit, the way he used to waste it on drugs. He’s bad at his job and it’s the only job he can get.

Ben sits on the couch with a sketchbook. He’s shoved Klaus’ clothes onto the floor.

“Bone apple tea,” Klaus says. He hands Ben a plateful of slightly crispy chow mein.

“Thanks,” Ben says. 

The next day, Klaus puts in a request to have Tuesday evenings off — indefinitely.

“Would you be able to take a morning shift, if we needed you to?” Luther asks.

Klaus shrugs. “I mean, have I ever worked a morning?”

“I’ll put you down as a tentative yes,” Luther says.

“You do that, big guy,” Klaus replies. He gives Luther a pair of half-hearted finger guns.

He’s… Wow, he’s actually nervous about going to a meeting. He tries to sleep in and just thrashes around in bed for a full three hours. A bath doesn’t help. He tears his room apart looking for the little white plastic poker chip he got after rehab. 

Klaus lies on the floor surrounded by shoes and patterned silk scarves.

“I give up,” he says to the ceiling. Then he turns his head toward his bed and sees something small and white caught under the corner of Ben’s freecycled bed frame. Klaus remembers being annoyed that one leg was shorter than the other when Ben first let him sleep in the bedroom. Klaus closes his eyes and feels, for a moment, that the higher power might actually exist. If it does, it definitely has a fucking sense of humor.

Klaus lifts the bed up and wiggles his chip out with his toes. He puts it in his wallet, where it belongs. He tries not to look at it too much.

Ben comes back after Klaus has cooked himself a very late brunch.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Klaus asks.

“I’m going with you,” Ben says. 

“What?” Klaus asks.

Ben sighs. “I wasn’t… Ugh.”

Klaus’ anxiety spikes. He thinks about iron maidens, about medieval torture, about drinking molten metal.

“I wish I could have a fucking cigarette,” he says.

“Yeah, me too,” Ben says. 

They look at each other for a long moment and then Ben comes over and sits next to Klaus on the couch.

“Vanya asked about why you changed your day off,” Ben says. “And I didn’t tell her, but I guess Five is fucking psychic or Luther told him.”

“I didn’t tell Luther why I requested Tuesdays,” Klaus says.

“Alright, Five can fucking see the future,” Ben says. “That’s cool.”

“That short little bastard,” Klaus says. “I’m going to kick his oompa-loompa ass the next time I see him. I’m going to step on him.”

Ben laughs, even though it looks like any kind of mirth causes him physical discomfort. “Goddamnit, Klaus.”

“Whatever,” Klaus says. “So, everyone we work with probably thinks I relapsed.”

“Vanya said I should go with you,” Ben says. “She’s working a double to cover for me.”

Klaus swallows his self-pity like a mouthful of ipecac. His stomach clenches.

“She shouldn’t have to do that,” Klaus says. “Doesn’t she have important… musician stuff to do?”

“She said this was important,” Ben says. “And, I quote, ‘It’s not like I’ll get any worse if I miss one practice.’”

“Shit,” Klaus says. He still hasn’t ever gone to one of her concerts.

The meeting is open, with a closed meeting afterwards. The overly friendly, plump woman who was running the meetings when Klaus first came back to Massachusetts is still in charge. She remembers Klaus’ name. Her hugs feel like being crushed by two tons of flower petals, soft and perfume-y.

“And Ben!” she says. “Are you chaperoning?”

“You got it,” Ben says.

She doesn’t seem concerned until Klaus gives his days count at the round-robin introductions. She scribbles something down in her notebook.

“I know it’s late, but we’ll order you a medallion right away,” she says. “The engraving takes about a week.”

“But I haven’t been coming to meetings,” Klaus says. 

“Time marches ever forward,” she says. “Even if you don’t come to meetings.”

“I can vouch for him,” Ben says. “Hi, my name is Ben. I’ve known Klaus since he was thirteen. We’re foster brothers and roommates.”

“And we work together!” Klaus interjects.

“Yes,” Ben says. “We are probably codependent.”

Klaus’ sponsor back in California fell off the wagon and left him feeling like he was better off doing this alone. Plus all the moving around looking for a place he could afford and working evenings made actually coming to meetings seem impossible. But here he is, he tells the group, because he can’t do this alone.

The leader introduces him to a new sponsor during the closed group, a serious-looking woman wearing simple makeup. She says her name is Helen and that she did coke in college. Now she plays violin and teaches music in Boston. Klaus, with his GED and his failed DJ career, feels intimidated just sitting in front of her.

Her face doesn’t even react as he starts to talk about his past, about how he keeps thinking about it, about how he thinks everyone around him must know and they can’t possibly respect him. Or love him.

He’s not worth loving.

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Helen says. “If you keep saying you’re not worthy of love, you’ll never see that people love you. Not to be cliché about it, but if you don’t love yourself, how can you ask the people around you to?”

“Oh,” Klaus says. “You’re a hardass.”

“I don’t ask things of other people that I’m not willing to do myself,” Helen says.

She gives him her number. “Text me any time. And see you next week.”

Ben has to come back that week and talk about how Klaus always comes to work and he supports his friends and he writes in his journal and practices self-care. And Klaus gets a little enameled blue medallion that says “out of the darkness of addiction” and “into the light.” It’s got a two on the back, fenced in by words like “service” and “community” and “gratitude.” It also says “Klaus.”

He presses his knuckles under his nose and sniffs. His eyes get very hot.

Ben puts his hand between Klaus’ shoulders and pets him like a frightened dog.

When they leave, Klaus says, “I want to get a tattoo.”

“Cool,” Ben says. “I think I’m going to go back to work and close so Vanya can go home.”

“It was Vanya again?” Klaus asks.

“Yeah,” Ben says. 

“Shit,” Klaus says. “I gotta get her flowers. Or chocolates. Or something.”

They wait for the bus together. “I think we should both get tattoos.”

“Okay,” Ben says.

Klaus forces himself to go to sleep early that night. He wakes up before Ben, even, and adds an egg to some leftover fried rice for breakfast. He leaves what he doesn’t eat in the fridge for Ben.

He could wait for the bus to Wegmans, but Klaus decides to walk. He buys a soda and a candybar, in addition to a pot full of big white flowers. He carefully touches a petal with some brown on it.

“Don’t die,” he tells the flowers as he sits on curb to the parking lot and eats his snickers.

He carries the flowers on the bus over to the café. At 10 a.m., things are hopping at The Umbrella Café. Klaus tucks the pot under his arm and pushes open the door. He nods at Allison and goes to sit. He wishes he had a cigarette to pass the time, so he texts that to Helen.

“Write that in your journal,” she replies.

He frowns at his cracked phone screen.

Eventually there are only the customers who have been served already, so Klaus walks up to the register.

“Hi Vanya,” Klaus says.

“Hi Klaus,” she says. “You’re here early.”

“Yep,” Klaus says. “I brought you something.”

She pulls back slightly. Her eyebrows pull together. “What?”

“It’s a thank you,” he says. “I think, uh, maybe I should have written a card. Oopsies.”

She blinks. “The flowers?”

“Yeah,” Klaus says.

“Wow, Klaus,” she says. “Thank you.” And she says it like she means it with her whole body, more sincere than anything Klaus has ever said in his life. She smiles at the flowers and then looks up at Klaus as she takes them.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she says.

Klaus swallows. “I did.”


	4. "Should I take it off?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus finally gets a clue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for emotional turmoil, EXTREMELY awkward moments, and Klaus having some struggles.

By two in the afternoon, Klaus is so tired it feels like he might die. He crunches coffee beans between his teeth and lets his saliva turn bitter-sour with their flavor. His stomach hurts with what might be hunger — but also it could just be that he never eats so early in the day and he had candy for breakfast. What is he? Fourteen?

Klaus is leaning with his head against a cabinet when Dave comes in. Ben takes his order and Klaus manages to at least smile and give Dave a little wave. He’s got a headache now, from eating coffee beans. Dave waves back.

Klaus could make this order in his sleep. He’s fairly certain that he’s dreamed about it. In his dreams, Dave tells him how amazing he is at making coffee. He says, “You’re a master of customer service, Klaus. And I’ve got a big tip just for you.” And then he falls into Klaus’ arms, as though Klaus could actually hold up a guy the size of Dave. But that’s what dreams are about, right?

Klaus snaps the lid on the Americano and puts it on the counter. Dave’s hand closes over his and Klaus jumps. He feels half-asleep and he’s still in that fantasy of Dave that’s not real Dave. But real Dave’s fingers are on top of his. Klaus squeezes the cup and the lid pops off. Espresso and boiling hot water spills down the counter and all over Dave’s shirt.

“Oh shit!” Klaus says. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Suddenly, he is very awake and has a fistful of paper towels. He skids around the corner of the counter in his heels and nearly twists his ankle. One of his shoes comes off. There’s coffee all down Dave’s button-up shirt. It’s not white, at least, but that light blue definitely shows all the coffee that just got dumped on him. Klaus presses paper towels against Dave’s stomach. He blots instead of rubbing.

“Shit,” Klaus keeps saying. “We have dish soap and vinegar. I can get this out, I swear.”

“Should I take it off?” Dave asks, and Klaus freezes. He’s got his hands both pressed against Dave’s body just above his belt. He’s bent over with the smell of coffee on his hands. His knee is half bent because his shoe came off, but it has to look from Dave’s perspective like Klaus is a second away from kneeling.

“Oh Christ,” Klaus says. “I am _so_ sorry!”

This is bad.

He stands up and thrusts the paper towels at Dave. “I’ll stop attacking you.”

“I’ve got a spare uniform at work,” Dave says. “Or I could just hit up the barracks on my way back.”

“I’m making a fresh Americano,” Ben says.

“But if you think you can get coffee stains out,” Dave says. He looks at Klaus and opens the top button of his shirt. Klaus’ heel, the only one he’s got left, wobbles. He opens two more buttons. There’s an undershirt there, but Klaus could bet that’s got coffee on it too.

“No!” Klaus says. “Don’t!”

Those dreams about Dave are about to get a whole lot weirder.

Dave’s face gets a little pink. Klaus blinks. Oh, wow, okay, Dave is fully prepared to take his shirt off right here in the café and leave it in Klaus’ hands. He’s not even buttoning it back up right now. He’s just looking at Klaus and getting more and more pink.

Dave’s not mad. Worse, Dave trusts him.

He actually, honestly _trusts_ Klaus.

Is he brain damaged, maybe?

“I mean,” Klaus says. “If you took your shirt off, then I’d have to take my shirt off — for fairness. And that’s definitely a health code violation.”

“I’m sure it would be a big draw for, uh, customers,” Dave says. He laughs and starts to close the buttons on his coffee-damp shirt.

Klaus laughs, too. “Only if I had abs like yours. Damn, that was like trying to clean up a brick wall.”

He can’t help but smile at Dave in a certain way, because he’s pretty sure. Yeah, he’s definitely sure.

When did _that_ happen?

Klaus still apologizes six more times and promises that the next time Dave comes back, the whole order’s on the house.

“As long as it’s not on my shirt again,” Dave says, but Klaus can tell it’s a joke. And even if he couldn’t, Dave says, “Sorry. I’m kidding. Thank you, Klaus. And you said dish soap and vinegar will get this out?”

“Definitely,” Klaus says. “That’s what I use.”

After Dave leaves, they get a whole string of customers — including the return of Oatly Oat Milk lady. So Klaus makes more coffee. He fucks up a few more orders. Ben asks him what’s wrong with him. Five comes back from wherever it is he goes for long, weird periods of time.

Finally, just after six, things settle down. A few undergrads and one professor take up space, not ordering anything new. Klaus leans his elbows on the counter and props up his chin on his fists.

“I think Dave is into me,” he says.

“Wow,” Ben says. “No shit, Sherlock. How long did that one take you?”

“Shut up,” Klaus says. “He was just being nice before.”

“Alright,” Ben says. “But now you’ve touched his abs and he’s into you?”

“Klaus,” Five says. “Are you committing sexual harassment on company time?”

The professor looks up at them. He’s balding and wearing a very old T-shirt with a programming joke on it.

“No,” Klaus says. “That would be non-consensual and, well, harassment.”

Five squints at him. “So what _are_ you doing, then?”

“He finally figured out Dave is flirting with him,” Ben says. “After he spilled coffee on him.”

“I can’t trust either of you alone in this establishment,” Five says, but he seems satisfied with the answer. He goes to fix himself a cup of coffee.

“And yet,” Klaus says to himself. “You regularly leave us without adult supervision.” Ben snorts.

That night, Diego shows off his tattoo again. Ben tells him about Dave and Dave’s shirt. They lock up and all take their shirts off after hours, even though the lights are on and people can still see them through the windows.

“Happy for you, Klaus,” Diego says, when he’s done making fun of him. “This Dave seems like an okay guy. And if he’s not?”

Diego tilts his head and draw his thumb across his throat.

“I’d like to see you try,” Klaus says. He slides away with dust clothes tied onto his bare feet.

“We all deserve to be fired,” Ben says.

On the bus home, Klaus puts his forearm up beside Ben’s and talks about getting a tattoo that spreads from Klaus’ arm to Ben’s.

“Like what?” Ben asks. “An open cage and some birds?”

“Who’s the cage?” Klaus asks.

“You,” Ben says. “Obviously.”

Klaus frowns. He doesn’t want to be a cage. He doesn’t want to be something the birds leave — or something that traps them. He shakes his head.

Until he can decide on a design for the tattoo, Klaus just keeps living. Every day is a new day. He writes in his journal. Maybe he dresses up a little more, if he’s awake enough to remember that Dave will be looking.

But then Dave goes away for training. He says he’ll return on October 1 — Klaus and Ben’s birthday.

Until then, Klaus goes back to leggings and whatever. He does not dress well and everyone tells him so, except Luther who dresses like a crossfit hobo. Klaus can wear all the patterned leggings and thrift shop blouses he wants, he will still be better dressed than Luther. And Ben, too. Who is Ben to criticize him? All he wears is hoodies with holes in them!

At the meeting before the first, Helen gives him a book by some Japanese lady, Marie Kondo. She likes to be early for things, she says. “This is my birthday present to you, Klaus,” she says.

He says, “Thank you” because he’s not some kind of monster.

On the day that Dave said he would be back, Klaus wears mascara and a little bit of shimmer. It’s totally because of Dave. Yes, obviously. But also, it’s his birthday. He’s thirty! Might as well feel pretty.

“Wow,” Dave says. His hair is darker, Klaus thinks, more brown than blond, but still so curly.

“The usual?” Klaus asks. He should have added some lip gloss, but it would be all over his teeth by now.

“You remember?” Dave asks, and he looks so surprised and happy that Klaus almost forgets. But he makes this order in his dreams.

“Two with cream and sugar, one with extra cream, two with sugar, and three black medium coffees,” Klaus says. “And a big ol’ Americano.”

Dave grins. “Exactly right.”

“Coming right up,” Klaus says.

And Ben lets him do the whole thing on his spindly little heels. At least it lets Klaus talk to Dave about nothing at all. Dave tells him that Texas is hot and boring, which meant that work was hot and boring too.

“I missed,” Dave says, and Klaus looks at him. Dave swallows.

“This place,” he finishes.

“Well, this place missed you,” Klaus says. “And by this place, I mean me.”

Dave blinks. He gets a little pink.

“I missed you, too,” Dave says, when Klaus turns around. Klaus grins at the espresso machine. He makes the Americano with a little more enthusiasm, though the machine probably doesn’t appreciate it.

“Have a good one, Dave,” Klaus says, as he carefully sets the Americano on the counter.

“Thank you, Klaus,” Dave says. “You do the same. Have a great birthday!”

“Oh,” Klaus says. “I will.”

He already has.

On the bus, Klaus turns to Ben and asks, “Do you think Klaus Katz would sound stupid?”

“Oh my god,” Ben says.

“Hey,” Klaus says. “My sponsor says I have to believe that I can be loved in order to be loved. I have to love myself.”

“Is this what self-love is about?” Ben asks. “I want to keep self-hating.”

Klaus tsks him with his tongue against his teeth. “Now, now, Ben, I love you and I think you should love yourself.”

Ben shoves him slightly. “Have you decided on a tattoo? Because I’ve been drawing some things.”

That night, Klaus is gifted Ben’s ink and pencil sketchbooks. He flips through each page with careful reverence. This is all of Ben’s magic and he has to respect it.

“You should DJ again,” Ben says. “Like more than just the café playlists.”

“Nah,” Klaus says.

Ben shrugs and goes into his room. There are beautifully rendered locks and keys, and just simple outlines — the idea of a lock, a key. There’s an anchor and a chain. A pair of puzzle pieces that fit together. Further in, Klaus sees a lot of sketches of Ben’s hands and piles of laundry. There are sketches of Klaus listening to music on his broken phone or his slightly less broken laptop. There’s a sketch, obviously from memory, of Dave.

Then, there are all the sketches Ben did for Diego’s tattoo. One of them is a long and narrow thing with a capsizing ship and a four tentacles rising from the waves. Klaus holds his arm up beside the ship.

“Yeah,” he says. This is the one he wants.

He knocks on Ben’s door and then lets himself in. Ben is inexplicably shirtless and splattering paint on a canvas on the floor with a toothbrush.

“Did you knock?” he asks.

“Yeah, of course,” Klaus says. “Also, I found it.”

“Cool,” Ben says. He puts the paint-covered toothbrush on his bed with a dripping cup of paint. He pulls a hoodie on over his paint-splattered skin. “Show it to me.”

Klaus holds up the sketch book and points. “This one. I get the ship you get the—”

“Tentacles?” Ben asks.

“Do you hate it?” Klaus asks.

“No,” Ben says. He crosses his arms over his chest while looking at the drawing. Then he pulls an arm out and pushes up the faded fabric of his sleeve. There are so many holes in the cuffs that they’re starting to unravel. The cuff has almost completely split open.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “I can see it. And together you get the whole picture.”

“Yeah!” Klaus says. “Separately they’re badass. But together they’re…” He gestures for Ben to fill in the words.

“Super badass,” Ben says.

“Yes!” Klaus says. “Exactly!” He snaps his fingers and points at Ben.

“You? You are a genius,” Klaus tells him. “I love you.”

Ben laughs. “I love you enough to get a tattoo.”

On the second of October, they call and make an appointment with Ben’s tattooist friend, who agrees to do it in the morning on a Tuesday so that Ben can go to work still. Because he has the day off, Klaus takes suitcases full of clothes and jewelry and shoes on the bus to Boston and comes back with tattoo money.

“Thank you, Ms. Kondo,” he says, kissing all the dollar bills.

That night, they order pizza and put candles on it.

“Happy birthday,” Ben says.

“The big three-oh,” Klaus says. He plays Combichrist and dances around the apartment while Ben sits and sketches, until their neighbor pounds on the door.

“Wow, remember when we were thirteen and goth,” Ben says. And then he makes Klaus look at old pictures in total silence, like that’s not absolute torture.

“I think that was the week I first did coke,” Klaus says, looking at a picture of his skinny, sixteen-year-old self.

“Where did you even get coke?” Ben asks.

“See, I talked to the older boys and girls,” Klaus says. “And they liked me, so they gave it to me. And you were afraid of anyone older than you, so you never talked to anyone.”

“And now look at you,” Ben says. “You have one friend.”

“Shut up,” Klaus says.

In the quiet, Klaus says, “Those people weren’t really my friends.”

“I’m sorry, Klaus,” Ben says.

“You were, though,” Klaus says. “Our… weird little family always was.”

“I couldn’t ask for a better twin,” Ben says. He drops his pencil and takes Klaus’ hand. They don’t share a bed that night, but Klaus dreams of being held by someone who loves him anyway. He wakes up muttering, “Maybe we can all get married.”

Later in October, they meet with the tattooist. She gets all excited about the design; Ben shows her Diego’s finished piece on Instagram.

“Yeah, I saw this,” she says, pointing her black gloved fingers at Ben’s phone. “The Kraken! Your work’s always stupid dope.”

Ben blushes a little, which means Klaus has to tease him about it for a week. The appointment gets moved to a Friday morning, so they’ll both have to work after getting inked.

Klaus excitedly tells Dave about the tattoo plan, and Dave asks how many tattoos Klaus has. The conversation ends with Klaus taking off his blouse and yanking his tie-dyed tank top to the side to show off the tiger on his shoulder blade. All that gives Ben plenty to mock Klaus about in return.

Klaus goes to work that day with saran wrap over his forearm. It’s mid-November and cool enough for long sleeves. Sort of. He’s sweaty under the plastic. It’s hot work, making coffee. He’s itchy.

“Can I see it?” Dave asks.

“It’s really gross right now,” Klaus says. “Oozing.”

“I’ll put pictures on Instagram,” Ben says from a distance. He’s taking his break.

“You have Instagram?” Dave says, turning halfway around to talk to Ben.

“Yeah, for my art,” Ben says. “I designed the tattoo, so it’s going on there.”

“Do you have Instagram?” Dave asks Klaus. Klaus laughs.

“I mean, I used to, but I forgot my password,” he says.

“You can find his account through mine,” Ben says.

“It’s dumb though,” Klaus says. “I think I posted three pictures last year.”

At the end of the day, Ben says, “Hey, Dave followed me.”

“Let me see,” Klaus says.

“Are you going to stalk him?” Ben asks.

“Obviously,” Klaus says, making grabby hands with his long fingers. Ben hands him his phone with a sigh.

Klaus has forgotten how to use Instagram, or else it has updated a lot in the past year. He scrolls through Dave’s photos looking for shirtless selfies. He gets pictures of food eaten in Texas — mostly drool-worthy barbecue and burritos the size of Klaus’ head. He gets pictures of armadillos and blue skies and little potted succulents. Dave takes blurry, zoomed in photos of dogs being taken for walks. He takes photos of gym equipment that hasn’t been put back right and says, “No one loves you the way you deserve, do they?” He takes pictures of sunrises and says, “I hate training, but at least there’s this.” He takes pictures of coffee cups in The Umbrella Café’s little cardboard holders and says, “The best part of my day.”

“Jesus Christ,” Klaus says. His chest feels too tight. He gives Ben his phone back.

“Did he post his dick?” Ben asks. “What happened?”

“Look,” Klaus says. “Just look.”

Ben looks. He puts his hand slowly to his mouth.

“Oh,” Ben says. “He does like us.”

“I want to die,” Klaus says. “I just wanted to see his abs.”

“I can’t go on like this,” Klaus tells Ben. “He’s too good for me.”

“Yeah, your last post on Instagram was a dead cockroach on the sidewalk,” Ben says.

“Really?” Klaus asks.

Ben pulls it up and shows it to him. “You named it Klaus Jr.”

Klaus gags.

There’s only a photo of Ben’s arm and then a separate photo of Klaus getting tattooed on Ben’s account, though Klaus makes Ben show him the photos and he can slide between the two. Still, Klaus insists that they need a photo to show how it’s supposed to be one image.

They make Diego take it. Their fingers interlocked and the café out of focus behind their forearms.

“My veins look gross,” Klaus says.

“Your veins always look gross,” Ben says. “That’s as good as they’re going to look.”

“He’s right,” Diego says.

Ben posts the photo. “I’m tagging you, Klaus, so Dave can see your gross account.”

“I hate you,” Klaus says.

“I want a photographer credit,” Diego says.

“Got it,” Ben says.

And about fifteen minutes later, he says, “Got a like from Dave.”

Klaus pumps his fist like it’s some actual victory for him. Dave is probably not going to be into Klaus’ instagram content, but there’s nothing he can do about that. He doesn’t even know what email he put down and he should probably just make a new one. He would totally post pictures of his non-existent abs on it, too.

“Uh-oh,” Ben says.

Klaus stops trying to think of what he could use as a screen name as he scrubs out coffee pots, and looks at Ben.

“What?” he asks. “What’s ‘uh-oh’? Is this a work ‘uh-oh’? I didn’t hear anything break.”

“Nothing’s broken over here,” Diego says. He’s been sitting for about thirty minutes, because he claims there’s no point in mopping while Klaus is walking around barefoot getting his toe germs everywhere.

“Klaus,” Ben says, in a voice that makes Klaus’ stomach drop. “Uh, can you come here for a second.”

Klaus turns off the water and leaves the carafe in the sink. He wipes his hands on a towel as he goes, so he’s still twisting it in his fingers when he leans over Ben’s shoulder.

Dave’s face is just a tiny fraction of his Instagram icon, which is about the size of Klaus’ pinkie toenail on Ben’s phone. It’s still the first thing Klaus sees and thinks about before he reads the screen.

“Nice tat! You two make a cute couple.”

“Ew,” Klaus says. It’s a larger disgust than the dead roach feeling. It comes right from the gut.

“What do I say?” Ben asks.

“I mean, if I was going to go for anyone,” Klaus says. “It would be Diego. He’s got muscles.”

“What about my muscles?” Diego asks.

“But I’d have to look past his gaping deficit in personality first,” Klaus says.

Ben laughs. “Klaus, seriously.”

“Just tell him the truth, man, I don’t care,” Klaus says. “We can tell him tomorrow in person if you want.”

“You’re not gonna be here tomorrow,” Ben says.

“I’ll stop by while getting groceries,” Klaus says.

“No, you won’t,” Ben says.

He types, “lol we are NOT a couple but thanks. PS. Klaus is single and ready to mingle; I am not.”

“That makes it sound like you’ve got a boyfriend,” Klaus says.

Ben deletes “I am not.”

“Would you consider yourself ready to mingle?” Ben asks.

“Sure,” Klaus says. “Let’s see if Dave still likes me after he sees Klaus Jr.”

They have to wait until Friday to tell Dave the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“So Ben and I live together,” Klaus says.

“It’s been almost a year,” Ben says.

“And we’re like best friends,” Klaus says.

Dave nods.

“I’ve known Klaus for almost seventeen years,” Ben explains.

Klaus looks at Ben and waits. Ben looks back at him, stoic. Dave is looking at both of them, intent and quiet.

“We were in the same, uh, what do we wanna call it?” Klaus asks. “We didn’t really discuss this.”

“That’s okay,” Dave says. “Neither of you has to tell me any of this.”

“But we want to,” Ben says. “Right, Klaus?”

Actually, it feels awful saying it. Klaus doesn’t tell people this shit outside of sharing time at meetings and group.

“I guess you’d call it a group home,” Klaus says. “Ben is my brother that I never wanted.”

“I also never wanted a brother,” Ben says.

“Oh, I wanted a brother,” Klaus says. “Just not you.”

“Thanks,” Ben says.

“Oh,” Dave says. “So my comment was… kinda gross, wasn’t it?”

“A little,” Ben says.

“Plus, I am, like, _extremely_ available,” Klaus says.

Dave laughs, but then just apologizes a bunch more times. He doesn’t even acknowledge that Klaus is reaching. And Klaus couldn’t be reaching further. Come on, “single and ready to mingle?” What more is he supposed to do here?

“If he’s lost interest because we’re foster kids, then fuck him,” Klaus says, after another week.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Ben says. “I mean, if it is, then yeah, fuck him.”

“Hey, Vanya’s orchestra is doing a winter concert at the beginning of December,” Klaus says, abruptly changing the subject.

“That’s cool,” Ben says. “You still can’t drive though.”

“Maybe I’ll take an Uber,” Klaus says.

“You have Uber money?” Ben asks.

“I haven’t bought a pair of shoes since October,” Klaus says. “I have Uber money.”

The bus jostles them into each other at a stop.

“What the fuck?” Ben says. “You stopped buying shoes?”

“Yeah, man,” Klaus says. “My compulsive shopping was an attempt to fill the void that addiction had left in my life, but my real problem…”

He presses his hands over his heart. “Not even high heels could bring me the satisfaction of self-love.”

The bus lurches sharply at another stop and a woman gives them both a look before sitting as far away as possible.

“Except maybe a pair of Louboutin stilettos,” Klaus clarifies. “Anyway, I kept all the shoes that, y’know, sparked joy.”

“Sparked joy?” Ben asks.

Klaus snaps his fingers. “Sparked joy.”

“Okay,” Ben says. “I wanna see what shoes spark joy for you when we get home.”

Klaus grins. “Man, I’ll give you a whole fashion show. I made lists of what I like about all my shoes, even. _And_ all my clothes!”

Klaus’ patchwork coat with the fur trim makes him happy, as do his banged-up off-brand Doc Martens. He has one pair of real Converse from California and a pair of leggings that laces up on both sides all the way from ankle to hip. He kept three fishnet shirts — one black, one purple, and one white.

He kept the dress with the cape that he wore to Allison’s play and his chunky, oxford-looking spectator heels in black and white. Most of his colored shoes are gone except for a pair of low, slingback mules in a dark plum color with a little kitten heel.

Even though it’s flaking apart inside and smells unpleasant, Klaus kept his fur coat. And, obviously, his knee-high boots with the six-inch heels spark joy. Also ankle pain.

“Joy and pain are like sisters,” Klaus says. “Really, really hot sisters.”

“Shouldn’t that go with a skirt or something?” Ben asks. “A dress at least?” His sketchbook sits in his lap and he draws the pile of shoes Klaus has left in front of the couch.

“This is definitely a bussy out kind of a look,” Klaus says.

Ben laughs at him and Klaus pulls the musty, old fur up around his mouth and chin. He bats his eyelashes and turns his leg out so that the whole inside of his thigh is visible leading up to his Calvin Klein panties. Boxers and briefs didn’t spark joy, but neither did any of the bright or lacy shit that Klaus had been accumulating for ages because it was soft and slippery between his fingers. He probably could have sold the underwear, but he’s trying out this thing lately called “having a little bit of dignity.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ben wheezes.

Klaus laughs and runs off. He trades everything for bare feet and a silk bathrobe with some makeup stains on the sleeves.

“Maybe Diego would drive you to Vanya’s concert,” Ben suggests. “Orchestras are good dates, right? Heterosexuals like that.”

“You really think Diego’s straight?” Klaus asks.

“You still think he’s not?” Ben asks.

“We kissed once,” Klaus says.

“You were fourteen,” Ben says. “And it was cause Allison paid you both fifty dollars just to see if you would.”

“So you’re saying sexual orientation can’t be defined by acts,” Klaus says.

“What kind of monster says it is?” Ben asks.

“Straight people,” Klaus says. Then he shoots Ben with a double blast of finger guns and laughs.

The next time that Diego comes in to help them close, Klaus asks him if a man could suck another man’s dick and still consider himself straight.

“I’m not going to suck your dick, Klaus,” Diego says.

“Bold of you to call me a man, Diego,” Klaus says. “Presumptive even.”

Then Diego pauses and Klaus watches him crack his knuckles. “Did Dave pull some bullshit?”

“What?” Klaus asks. “No?! No!”

He adds another “No!” for emphasis. Diego drops his fists.

“As a serious question,” Klaus says. “Ben and I are having a debate about it and we need hetero input.”

Diego shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, you gotta trust people when they tell you about themselves. Even if you think — ‘I know better,’ you don’t know somebody else’s life like that.”

“Aw, Diego,” Klaus says.

“Did that settle your debate?” Diego asks.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “More than.”

“Does Eudora like music?” Klaus asks.

She does. She totally does. Klaus explains to Diego that Vanya’s orchestra is doing a winter concert. It’s going to be _so_ cool and Vanya would be happy if people came, wouldn’t she? Everyone supported Allison, didn’t they? Anyway, Klaus would need a ride.

Diego sighs.

“Does Ben want to come, too?” he asks, with the resigned tone that means he’s already agreed. But he won’t be happy about it or anything.

“Obviously,” Klaus says, patting Diego’s shoulder.

“I can’t wait until you get your boyfriend Dave to drive you around,” Diego says.

“Me too,” Ben says. “When is your boyfriend Dave going to drive me around?”

Klaus kind of wants to lie down and smother himself with the mophead because of the phrase “your boyfriend Dave.” Like, obviously, he wishes he was asking Dave for rides instead of hassling Diego. In an ideal dimension and timeline, Klaus gets personally chauffeured around Massachusetts on the back of Dave’s motorcycle. They can get one of those little Batman and Robin sidecars for Ben. He’d love that, for sure.

Instead, Klaus hits Diego with the mop handle “on accident” and Diego snaps him on the back of his arm with a twisted up dust cloth.

“Jesus!” Klaus hisses. “That hurt!”

On the weekend, Diego tells them that Eudora is super excited to see a concert.

“Now she thinks I’m all cultured and shit,” he says. “Between Allison’s play and the photography thing on shibari that I took her to, and now this. Cha-ching!”

He lifts his knee when he pumps his fist; Klaus doesn’t restrain his laughter.

“Whatever,” Diego says. “I gotta thank you. Let’s get dinner after this. It’s on me. I’ll drive.”

“Where are you taking us?” Ben asks, because he already knows that Diego isn’t really going to give them a choice.

“That all-night Vietnamese place,” Diego says. “I want pho.”

“The one where all the drunks hangout after the bars close?” Ben asks. “On a Saturday night?”

“What’s the problem with — oh,” Diego says. He looks at Klaus.

Klaus shrugs, clutching the mop handle in both fists. “I’ll be fine.” He’ll text Helen and see if she’s still awake. She might be. He’ll be fine.

“We could get it to go,” Ben says. “Our apartment isn’t a shithole right now.”

“Really?” Diego asks.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Klaus read this self-help book, and now he’s all into cleaning and joy and shit.” He takes out his phone and shows something to Diego. “See?”

Diego whistles.

Klaus carefully lets go of the mop and puts it away. He gets his phone and texts Helen. “U up? NOT a journal thing”

He tucks his phone into the waistband of his leggings and watches Ben and Diego talk.

“I don’t think they actually serve booze there,” Diego says.

“But are you sure?” Ben asks.

Klaus’ phone vibrates his left ass cheek, making him wish pockets had sparked more joy. He might have to buy real pants.

“What’s the matter?” Helen replies.

“Friends wanna go to arestaurantw drunks and maybe a bar,” Klaus types in a hurry. “GOOD FRIENDS!!! DONT WANNA SAY NO!!!”

“What are you afraid will happen, Klaus?” Helen replies. “If you say yes? If you say no?”

“No = they hate me forever YES = i get drunk,” Klaus says. And then he’ll want to get high, obviously. He’ll want to hit the town! It’s been so long that Klaus feels it like an ache in his bones. His veins throb in his hands and his chest and right around his groin. He _wants_ so badly. Sweat beads on the back of his neck. He touches his chin just to feel his own facial hair. When he blinks, he’s aware of how his eyelids feel sliding over his eyeballs.

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back until the fluorescent lights illuminate the thin skin and all the little throbbing capillaries. Is this a panic attack? Is Klaus having an actual panic attack? He’d expected it would be louder.

“If they’re friends who would hate you for saying ‘no,’ then they don’t support your recovery process, Klaus,” Helen replies. “Certainly, if they would let you get drunk, they’re not your friends.”

Then, “I can only speak to my own experiences, but I trust my friends to respect my limitations and to help protect me.”

“The same way I respect myself by knowing my limitations and trying to protect myself,” she concludes.

Klaus looks at the words. He thinks about... About beer. Does it actually taste any good? Would it do anything except ruin the little medallion in his wallet for him forever? He checks his app. It’s getting so close to four digits. He wants a thousand days so bad. That’s just such a nice number. Those big, sexy zeros following a proudly erect number one. Fucking scrumptious-ass looking number: 1,000.

“Hey, Klaus,” Ben says. “Diego’s gonna run in the place and get food, and then we’ll eat at our place, is that okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Klaus says. “But I mean… I think I could go in. I won’t die.”

Ben stares at him across the café. “Are you sure?”

Klaus wipes the sweat off his forehead. “Yeah, I’m over it. It’s good now. Like really good.”

He waves his hands, including his phone with its lifeline to Helen and that timer he’d have to reset if he fucked up. Ben wouldn’t let him fuck up. Right now he looks like he’d rather handcuff Klaus to Diego’s gearshift than even let him _see_ a beer.

“I go grocery shopping,” Klaus says. “They sell wine and shit there.”

Ben frowns. “Fine.”

“So we’re good to go?” Diego asks. “Come on, lock up then.”

Diego’s car is a lot sexier than Luther’s, but Klaus has to accept the backseat and really there’s no surface in this car that wouldn’t light up like Las Vegas under a blacklight. Klaus says that and Diego grins at him through the rearview mirror.

“Gross,” Ben says.

“When you get a car,” Diego says. “And a driver’s license. You can cover the seats with any fluids you like, art boy.”

“Art boy?” Ben asks, as though a bad nickname is worse than thinking about Diego’s ball sweat being all over the leather seats under Klaus’ butt. At least his patchwork coat protects him.

Riding with Diego also means being subjected to whatever music comes up on his satellite radio, a gift from a fight sponsor. Marilyn Manson, Deftones, and, now as if to mock Klaus specifically, Tool.

“Why can’t we not be sober?” the radio asks.

“You know why,” Klaus mumbles to himself.

Diego turns the radio off and apologizes.

“I am just batting a thousand tonight,” he says. “Fucking shit.”

They ride in silence along 95 until they reach the exit, then Diego turns the radio back on. It’s playing Disturbed.

The place isn’t really open all night, but it is open pretty late. The sign says Pho #1. There are huge, plate-glass windows that throw fluorescent light out onto the dark sidewalk. The inside is extremely pink and Klaus wants to go in. He unbuckles his seatbelt and Ben glares at him.

“Fine,” Ben says. “We’re all going in, I guess.”

“Cool, cool, if you’re up for it,” Diego says. He puts on a pair of sunglasses even though it’s midnight. Klaus looks at the lights of the CVS, the two dive bars up the street, the slightly pink color of the light cast on the sidewalk. There’s the smell of fried food and steam in the air.

There are things about nightlife that Klaus missed, really missed. He itches his wrist beneath his tattoo, where the fur on his cuff keeps touching him. Diego holds the door for them.

“Klaus!”

Klaus hops straight up in the air for a moment and then takes a few steps as usual following Diego like he didn’t just do that. He knows that voice. He knows it’s Dave. He _knows_.

But Klaus smells like bulk-purchased cleaning products and old milk. The coffee smell is ubiquitous. Klaus never doesn’t smell like coffee. But he’s tired and sweaty under his coat. His hair has gone both flat _and_ frizzy, as it’s wont to do. He needs to take an hour-long bath and then sleep for eight hours. After he has some noodles. But, out of the corner of Klaus’ eye, Dave is smiling at him. He waves. Klaus lifts a hand and very cautiously waves back.

“You wanna go say ‘hi’?” Ben asks. “They look kind of…”

Yeah, Dave’s friends are definitely drunk and rowdy, threatening to spill food as they reach over each other. One gets very close to Dave’s face and Klaus watches Dave lean away, laughing.

Is that what Klaus was worried he’d want to be? Really?

“Oh yeah, they are toasted,” Klaus says. “Fershnickered. Three sheets to the wind.”

“Dave looks sober,” Ben says. He points out the luscious-looking Thai tea in Dave’s hand, sweaty with condensation and the warm, orange color of a fake tan.

“Yeah,” Klaus says. He lifts his hand and practically sticks his fingers in Ben’s face. “Hold on, I’m going in.”

Ben takes his hand, as requested, and Klaus drags him along as he approaches the table.

“Hi Dave,” Klaus says, his voice pitching up unexpectedly high. “How are you? How are things?”

“Uh,” Dave says. “I’m DDing tonight, so…” He shrugs and gives Klaus the kind of smile that begs for rescue, but fuck that’s so noble. He _is_ sober. And it’s really, really sexy that he can just be sober while his friends party it up around him.

“Not having any fun yourself?” Klaus asks.

“I don’t drink,” Dave says. “Don’t think it’s that fun to begin with.” And Klaus’ heart fully skips a beat. It really does. Is this what love feels like? He could just puke.

One of Dave’s friends leans over. Her hair is gelled up and back like a wave, but it’s collapsing somewhat. She’s too loud when she asks, “Is this Cookie?”

“It’s Klaus, actually,” Klaus says. But Cookie’s a new one.

“Yeah!” the woman says. She’s got suspenders on over her patterned button-up. “Cookie!”

“Oh my god, shut up!” the girl next to her says. She’s got a lovely, very short manicure. “You’re blowing it! You are sooo drunk!”

Ben squeezes Klaus’ hand.

“Cookie?” Klaus asks. He looks at Dave and raises an eyebrow.

“Cause you’re a fucking snack,” the pug-faced man at the table. He is blotchy with drunkeness, as though Klaus would ever find that appealing.

“Jesus Christ,” Dave says, softly.

“Well,” Klaus says. “This has been informative, but I think we’re ordering to go.”

Ben tugs on his arm and Klaus goes. “It was nice meeting your friends!”

He waves and Dave lifts his iced tea. Diego gives them a thumbs up from the register. He’s clearly just ordering whatever he thinks Ben and Klaus will want, which… honestly, will probably be what Ben and Klaus want. They’ve never been here before, it’s outside their take-out range. The door chimes when Ben pushes it open and Klaus follows him outside.

“Wish I still smoked,” Klaus says.

“Fuck, me too,” Ben says.

They don’t lean against the window, because they both know someone will have to windex their assprints off it. Klaus shoves his hands into his armpits under his coat.

“I’m going to the car,” Ben says.

Klaus looks over his shoulder through the window. He sees Dave getting up from the table. Dave catches him looking and Klaus turns his head away. But still, he paused.

“I’ll wait here,” Klaus says. “For Diego.”

Ben’s forehead wrinkles up. He knows Klaus is lying, even though he’s not lying.

“Get his phone number,” Ben says. “At least.”

Klaus laughs. There’s a pause, a moment, where Klaus just smells cooking oil and watches the glow of the CVS sign. The price of milk is advertised on the marque beneath it.

The door chimes and Klaus gets blasted by a fresh wave of the smells coming from inside the restaurant.

“Hey Klaus,” Dave says.

“Dave,” Klaus says, and he can’t keep the warmth out of his voice. He already knows that Dave came out here to talk to him. That’s nice. Klaus can’t think of a time when anybody’s followed him without the intent of stealing his money or his drugs.

“Everything alright?” Dave asks.

“Yeah,” Klaus says. “Totally. You know, it’s weird doing this when you don’t smoke, it’s just… y’know, loitering.”

Dave laughs, very lightly. “I am so sorry about my friends.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Klaus says. “Really, it’s fine.”

He sighs. “I’m just… the weird guy from the stupid coffee shop. At least it’s a compliment. I’m a snack.”

Dave calls the coffee the best part of his day. Dave trusts Klaus, at least with the safety of his clothes. Dave thinks he’s a snack. And Klaus is grateful for that, but what if he wants to be more? What if he’s tired of being dessert, of being a gas station packet of Chips Ahoy?

“No,” Dave says. “That’s ah, fuck, could I have… Five minutes? Two minutes?”

Klaus looks at him and Dave rubs a hand against his face as he keeps talking. “I want to explain, because… You’re… It’s not stupid. I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” Klaus says. “I mean, the slang is a little… youthful, I guess. But I’m hip. I know it’s not an insult.”

“Okay, okay,” Dave says, “but this story is stupid. So if it doesn’t make you laugh, you can just… punch me or something.”

“I’m not gonna punch you,” Klaus says. “I’d break my hand.”

“Fine, if it doesn’t make you laugh, I’ll buy you…” Dave seems stumped. He looks at Klaus to fill in the blank.

“A smoothie,” Klaus says. “Or a coconut water.”

“Sure,” Dave says. “Anything.”

“Alright,” Klaus says. “But it has to be a real brand name coconut water.” He untucks one his hands and gestures for Dave to tell the story.

“Okay, well, I started coming to the shop because our office secretary was sick,” Dave begins. “But then I met you! And Ben! And the coffee was great, but like… Driving off base and seeing you guys was such a break from… Everything.”

He sighs and kind of smiles. He moves like he’s going to step closer, so Klaus kind of turns on one heel. He lets the weight of his body carry him a little closer to Dave. Just a step, a few inches.

“And Aimee hates coffee, actually,” Dave says. “She hated getting it for everyone. The smell gives her a headache or something. So after that first time, I was like ‘Hey, Cha-cha. I’ll get the coffee again today.’ Cha-cha’s my CO. Capt. Chandler, actually.”

“How considerate of you,” Klaus says, and he means it. Dave’s shirt has a tiny blue gingham print on it, with navy and light blue and white interlaced.

“And it became a whole thing,” Dave says. “It’s way below my pay grade, and everybody knows it, so they all give me a hard time, like my CO is forcing me. I had to explain myself somehow.”

“Of course you did,” Klaus says. “Obviously.” He wants to touch Dave’s shirt so bad.  

“And I was like, ‘well, guys’ — those guys back there, ‘what if you got to leave work, go for a little drive and then eat a chocolate chip cookie every day,’” Dave says.

And Klaus, who was following all this perfectly fine until that point, jerks his head up and looks Dave in the eye. He knows his eyes must be very wide.

“I love chocolate chip cookies,” Dave says.

Klaus knows this. It was one of the first little facts he ever learned about Dave. But the café doesn’t serve chocolate chip cookies. Which means...

“What kind of chocolate chip cookie?” he asks, because he’s still thinking about Chips Ahoy. And damn it, he wants to be more than that. He deserves to be more than that. Doesn’t he?

Dave sighs and it’s kind of shakey. He puts his hands in his pockets and hunches his big ol’ shoulders up a little, like he’s embarrassed. Klaus bites the insides of his cheeks when he smiles. He looks away, even though he doesn’t want to. He wants to see Dave’s face when he answers, but Dave is getting shy.

“I was thinking, y’know, homemade, oven-fresh,” Dave says. “There was a kind my mom used to make before she married my step-dad. She’d make them from scratch and always smacked the top of my head with the back of the spoon when I asked if I could eat some of the dough. But it was always better after baking, honestly, like… About ten minutes out of the oven, when it’s still hot enough to burn your tongue.”

“So you think I’m hot,” Klaus says. “Is what I’m getting from this.”

“Yeah,” Dave says. “Hot and delicious. And… my favorite thing.”

He looks up slowly and Klaus feels so light-headed he might die.

“Can I give you my number?” Klaus asks.

“Yes,” Dave says. “Please.”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and, after a few taps, hands it over to Klaus. Klaus looks at him and fills in his name as Klaus The Cookie at The Umbrella Café. He has to get his own phone out to check his number.

“Thank you,” Dave says.

“Text me,” Klaus says. “So I have your number, too.”

“I will,” Dave says. “Right now.”

Klaus’ phone vibrates in his hand.

The door opens behind Dave.

“Am I interrupting or are you done?” Diego asks.

Dave stands up ramrod straight and says, “We are done, sir.”

Diego blinks.

“Cool,” Diego says. “Klaus, let’s go.”

“Bye Dave!” Klaus says. He waves as he goes, and then turns around and blows a kiss at Dave’s back.

“See you soon!” Dave says, before he opens the door to Pho #1. From twenty feet away, Klaus can still hear all of Dave’s friends yelling at him.

“That took forever,” Diego says.

“The food?” Klaus asks. “It didn’t seem like long.”

“No, idiot,” Diego says. “You and hot customer guy.”

“Hot customer guy?” Klaus says, offended. “His name is Dave.”

Klaus gets into the backseat before he looks at his phone. “Hey! This is Dave’s number.”

He opens the message and licks his lips. The car smells like hot broth.

“Gotcha,” Klaus replies.

“You know,” he keeps typing, “that’s the sweetest thing I can remember anyone ever saying about me and I think I might be in love with you.”

He deletes all that, because he isn’t an idiot. He texts Helen instead: “all clear”

“For now,” she replies, ominously.

Klaus tilts his head back against a car seat that has certainly been defiled by Diego more than once. He thinks about Dave in a blue gingham apron and oven mitts.

Back at the apartment, Diego says, “Holy shit” about thirty times. Klaus goes to his room and comes back with his journal. He tries to remember every word that Dave said and write it down, but then his hand keeps going.

“Dave is that pair of Louboutins I’ve wanted since I got sober. Can’t afford them STILL but I want them so bad. It’s not practical at all, but I’d wear them every day. They don’t fit who I am, but they fit the person I want to be. The person I wish I was.”

He shoves some bean sprouts in his face.

“If I had to choose Dave or the shoes, I’d pick Dave. Every day of my life. I think. Maybe. At least today. I hope tomorrow, too. But just for today.”

He sleeps with the notebook under his pillow like always, so he can write some gratitudes before he gets out of bed. Grateful to be breathing. Grateful for anti-static dryer sheets. Grateful for functional central heating and plumbing. Grateful for Dave’s phone number — so grateful he could just die, but he doesn’t want to die.

There is, Klaus recognizes, no way to put that feeling into a text message. Therefore, he doesn’t text Dave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a question: Would you prefer a higher-rated section to be posted as a separate fic or as chapters of this fic? 
> 
> And how do you feel about a sequel?


	5. "Glad I could be here."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus falls... in love?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter references some dark stuff related to Klaus' sexual past and, as usual, references addition and recovery.

Klaus has to request time off for Vanya’s concert, which means going in early to beg Allison while keeping it a secret from Vanya. Not that he has to, but… Surprises are nice, right?

Of course, Allison immediately turns around and says, “Vanya, would you be able to cover Friday night next week?”

And Vanya looks like a kicked puppy: “Allison, did you forget I requested off next week for my concert? It’s on the calendar.”

Allison looks like she wants to say, “Shit” so bad. And she directs that gaze at Klaus, like it’s his fault somehow.

“Please,” he says. “I haven’t taken vacation ever, like, not even sick leave unless you made me go home.”

“I shouldn’t have to make you go home,” Allison says.

“Yeah, exactly, so now I’m asking if I can stay home,” Klaus says. “Puh-lease, pretty please Allison?”

She sighs. She doesn’t curse at him. “Fine, yes.”

“Okay, Ben and Diego want off too, though, cause we’re doing something,” Klaus says. “Together.” That word comes with a little twist of his fingers, for some reason. 

“You…” Allison says. “Fine. Fine!”

And Klaus’ schedule doesn’t ever change, so he doesn’t bother to check the whiteboard calendar in the back. He just asks Ben and Diego if they got the day off. They make plans. Klaus spends a lot of time talking to himself in his bedroom about how he’s totally fine wearing the same dress to Vanya’s concert that he wore to Allison’s play, because it’s a beautiful dress and it makes him happy. It’s not joy that makes him want to buy a new dress, it’s anxiety. He breathes. Yes, he loves this dress. But he will have to wear tights under it, because it’s actually cold out now. He’ll wear boots — not the knee-high ones with the heels, but a nice pair of ankle boots — and his fur coat. 

“I should get flowers,” Klaus says. “Ben! I should get flowers!! For Vanya!”

“You do that,” Ben says, from his own room.

Klaus becomes totally focused on how to make this special, how to enjoy it fully. He doesn’t want to think about things like how Dave is shy around him now or how Helen keeps suggesting he should talk to a therapist. Yeah, Dave is probably waiting for Klaus to text him something other than “wow sorry I’m busy that day” and “just saw this but hope you’re having a good one.” Helen is also probably right and Klaus should “see a professional.” Klaus doesn’t know what to do or think about all of that. So he just doesn’t. 

He takes his free day and goes out for lunch with Ben to a place where they get to sit down at real tables and are served their own drinks. Klaus leaves a twenty dollar tip before they go pick up the flowers.

It’s a big bouquet of white flowers — not roses, but orchids. The fanciest thing that Klaus could afford, really.

“Do you think she would have preferred roses?” Klaus asks.

Ben just makes a face at him.

“What does that mean?” Klaus asks. “What?”

“Put them in water,” Ben says.

Klaus does. They spend a long time getting ready, with Ben ironing his shirt on the coffee table and Klaus taking a long, luxurious bath in the late afternoon. Klaus puts on two coats of mascara, even though he’s certain he’ll have raccoon eyes by the end of Vanya’s concert.

Diego texts them while Klaus has his dress hiked up to fix his stockings. He’s telling Ben that he should have shaved.

“We need to go,” Ben says.

Klaus grabs the flowers, which drip on the skirt of his dress. Ben locks the door behind them.

When they get outside, Eudora Patch leans against the passenger door of Diego’s car.

“Oh, wow,” she says. “You got her flowers?”

Klaus holds them closer against his chest, like a baby, he thinks, or a really cute cat.

“Diego,” Eudora says. “Your brothers got her flowers!”

She gets in the car, “How come you don’t get me flowers?”

“I just got you a tactical knife!” Diego protests. “It was three hundred dollars!”

Ben opens the car door, so that Klaus doesn’t have to somehow hold it and the flowers at the same time. He tries to arrange the stems so they drip on his coat and not the nice leather seats of Diego’s car. Eudora gets to pick the Pandora station and, at the stop lights, Diego looks at her and smiles until she looks over at him.

“How’s the coffee shop?” she asks.

Ben shrugs. “It’s still standing.”

Eudora asks Diego about the café — and about Ben and Klaus, like they’re not there to answer the questions themselves. But from the backseat, Klaus can see how she looks at Diego while he drives. Her hand moves against the edge of her seat like she wants to touch him. Diego glances at her through the rearview mirror and catches Klaus’ eye instead. He wiggles his eyebrows at Diego. Diego scowls. The conversation steers itself the way Diego’s often do.

“It’s just fucking unfair,” Diego says. “Any time guys stop by the café, it’s like Luther is always there. And then it’s all, ‘Hey! You fight? You crossfit? Whatchu takin’ man? Where you get the juice?’ First of all, they’re fucking idiots if they want to ‘roid up to win. But worse! Luther doesn’t!”

“Jesus,” Eudora says. 

“I know!” Diego says.

“He’s just… like that?” she asks.

Diego slaps his hand against the steering wheel. “He’s just like that!”

“Wow,” Eudora says. Diego’s face in the rearview mirror looks hurt.

“You know,” she says. “That’s really a body only a man would like on another man.”

Klaus can’t help but make a sound. “Oh no! Speak for yourself only.”

“I agree,” Ben says, which surprises another sound out of Klaus.

“He’s just so big,” Eudora says. “I’m really not into it. I prefer… balance.”

“I mean,” Ben says. “Luther’s a great guy. But…”

“Yeah, I mean, he’s kinda ugly, but he’s… He’s uh... sweet,” Klaus concedes. “I feel kinda sorry for him, like, has he ever had a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend, I guess.”

“Oh my god,” Eudora says.

“He definitely has not,” Diego says. “I guess that’s the one thing I’ve got over him.”

“Diego,” Eudora says. She does not say the name sweetly. She sounds kind of like an annoyed suburban mother in Wegman’s telling her seven-year-old to put a box of cereal back for the fourth time.

“What?” Diego says. “I got you. That’s a one-up on every man on earth.”

Eudora snorts. “Whatever.”

“Actually,” Diego says. “I think I’m the only one of us with a girlfriend — or boyfriend. How are things going with customer dude, Klaus?”

“They’re going,” Klaus says. “Trust me, they are going.”

Diego laughs at him, which would usually make Klaus throw a dust cloth at him. But Diego’s sort of steering a giant metal death trap with a leather interior. So Klaus crosses his arms over his chest and sinks down against the seat. It makes his skirt ride up his thighs. The flowers are slipping, too.

“You should’ve asked him to the concert!” Eudora says, like Klaus didn’t think of that two hundred times this week. 

Klaus readjusts the bouquet in his lap, so it doesn’t get squished on one side. The plastic crinkles loudly. There’s a wet spot on his fur coat.

They buy their tickets at the theater, taking a glossy magazine of a program. 

“These are alright to bring in?” Klaus asks, holding the flowers up in his elbow so the girl behind the glass can see him.

“Oh yeah!” she says. “Just no outside food or drink. So, uh, don’t eat the flowers.”

“Ah, damn,” Klaus says. “I love the taste of tulips.”

The girl laughs, and Klaus winks at her just because he can.

“Come on,” Ben says, taking Klaus by the elbow.

They find their seats, slightly to the left of the theater, and Klaus settles with the flowers laid against his chest. Klaus scans the crowd for Diego and Eudora. Instead, he sees a man helping a very tall, thin woman into a seat in the center of the venue. She’s wearing a half-sequined cocktail dress that grabs Klaus’ attention. He’s just as captivated by her beautifully bald head and triangular earrings. 

“Hey, hey,” Klaus says, elbowing Ben. “Check it out!” He points.

“Is that…” Ben says.

“She’s amazing,” Klaus says.

“Five,” Ben says.

“Holy shit!” Klaus says. The man in front of him turns around and looks at him.

“I hope you shut your mouth during the show,” he says.

“I haven’t shut my mouth in thirty years,” Klaus says.

“He will,” Ben says. “I promise.”

The man, greying around the temples and with a ridiculous slicked up mustache, turns around with only an eye roll.

“Holy shit,” Klaus whispers.

The other man, who Ben says is Five, has brown hair and a blue suit, which is about all Klaus can really see. He pulls his jacket open and takes out a flask before he sits down. The beautiful, bald woman turns and gestures at him. Klaus can barely see anything at this distance. It looks like it really could be Five.

But who’s the fucking supermodel?

Klaus watches the glint off her dress as the lights go down. There’s a moment, in the dark, when Ben reaches out and touches Klaus’ elbow resting between them. The curtain rises. Klaus moves his hand. Ben’s hand rests over his knuckles.

Klaus smiles.

The conductor measures out the time. The beat? The time signature, Klaus recalls.

The violin section picks up right away, followed by the woodwinds or flutes or whatever. Klaus thinks this music seems super familiar. He really doesn’t know anything about music. Some basic beat-matching? But computers can do that. A really clever dog or toddler could do it. So it makes him smile to himself that this music — the kind of thing that Reginald would’ve called _real_ music — is still music he can recognize. Maybe he could even remember the composer or whatever if he hadn’t poked his brain full of holes like Swiss cheese.

The music swells up and wraps up in about three and a half minutes, just like a modern pop song. Then the next song seems even more familiar. Klaus pats his free hand against his knee. The bouquet slips down his body and rolls into his lap. He adjusts it and holds it against him.

“It’s the ballet,” Klaus whispers.

Allison wanted to do dance, until she wasn’t good at it or something. And Klaus would steal her tights and leotards and the weird gauze skirts she had to wear that weren’t tutus. He would’ve killed for a tutu at fifteen.

A player enters from offstage and they drag out this giant thing that’s probably not actually a xylophone, but Klaus doesn’t actually know what it’s called. And that’s only the beginning of the weird percussion instruments! It’s the most fun Klaus has had in… In…

Wow, maybe he really should’ve invited Dave.

Is that a bassoon? And a _bell choir_?

Why _did_ Allison quit dance again? Why didn’t Klaus take it, if he liked the leotards so much? Why did Vanya keep up with the violin for so long she’s right there with her mousy brown hair waiting for each turn her section gets?

Klaus sways in his seat a little. Ben’s fingers end up between his.

Klaus shuts his eyes and the questions melt away. The music swells. This is a waltz, he thinks. He can imagine Ben’s hand in his. A marble floor. The swish of Klaus’ cape and gown around his legs. The feeling of a tall, narrow heel under foot as he steps and steps and turns. Vanya taking his hand next, with perfectly white gloves made of lambskin. Five and the mystery woman are doing the tango. Eudora and Diego are doing the cupid shuffle.  Luther and Allison are teaching Allison’s little girl how to do the macarena.

Ben moves his hand.

Klaus envisions a red military coat with big brass buttons and a white sash across the chest, real theater, real costume-y. In his mind, he sees Dave’s square chin. His bright, white teeth. His smile.

The music spirals and swells again. The violins sound amazing, like silk and velvet. But it’s the horn sections that takes them out.

“The Nutcracker,” Klaus whispers.

A light comes up on the conductor. They start making introductions. Klaus isn’t listening when they name some lady violin soloist in a wine-colored dress. It’s not Vanya, which is all that really matters.

“What?” Ben asks.

“Tchaikovsky,” Klaus says. “Check the program. I’m right.”

The light goes up on the soloist and she stays standing. The next piece is violin heavy and the rest of the orchestra seems to just watch this one woman in her sleek evening gown. Her whole body below the shoulders doesn’t even seem to move as she saws away. The music is fast, aggressive. Klaus sighs with relief when the rest of the violin section kicks in. Every one of that woman’s solos makes him clutch the arm rest. He sweats slightly. 

Then, halfway through, it softens. In the second row, Vanya plucks the strings of her violin. The soloist sits down, and then like a round, the violinists each seem to pick up the solo pieces. Their bows stop moving all in sync, but in echoes. And then, they catch up. There’s a visual to it that makes Klaus blink. His eyes are a little damp. He swallows and his throat is a little tight.

When the lights come up for intermission, Klaus doesn’t know if he can stand up without shaking.

The woman in sequins gets up and exits the row with the man who might be Five. They walk up the aisle and right past Ben and Klaus. Klaus waves. Five makes a horrified face. The woman smiles and waves back.

Ben opens his program.

“Nutcracker Suite, Oh-Pee Seventy-One A, by Peter Tchaikovsky,” Ben reads.

“It’s pronounce Pyotr,” Klaus says.

“Do I look Russian?” Ben says. “I just read.”

“I mean, you could be Russian,” Klaus says. “It would be kind of racist to say you couldn’t be Russian.”

“You don’t get to make those jokes,” Ben says. “Only I get to make those jokes.”

“Fine, you don’t look Russian,” Klaus says.

“Wow,” Ben says. “That’s a little racist, Klaus.”

The next piece, with the soloist, was Vivaldi’s Winter. And after intermission, they can expect some Strauss, Chopin, Debussy and, finally, Ben says, “Ave Maria.”

“Oooh, I love that bitch,” Klaus says. He’s just trying to get a rise out of Ben, or the greying hipster in front of them. Maybe Five, if he’s somewhere in earshot.

But then they actually get to it. The orchestra actually plays “Ave Maria” — after a very sweet waltz and then piece upon piece of wintery, melancholy music. The sons of bitches really _do_ it. They play “Ave Maria,” and Klaus has to blink away tears as the lights come up. He swallows. His shaking hands make the plastic around the bouquet crinkle.

While everyone claps, Klaus wipes his nose on the back of his wrist. Then he claps, of course, because he’s not a horrible person. His brain feels too full of images and thoughts and questions. His throat feels like it’s going to collapse inward if he tries to speak. Ben puts a hand on his shoulder and pats him.

The hipster says something disparaging about obnoxious queens as he leaves with the people in his row. A woman lingers and tries to apologize to them. Klaus can’t speak to tell her he doesn’t care about her or her date. Ben completely ignores her. She might as well be a ghost. 

Klaus clutches the flowers too tight as they exit the theater and collect their coats. He’s crushing them.

They can’t find Diego, but Five and his date are easy to spot. She’s got to be six feet tall without the heels, but those are glittery three-inch pumps. 

“Are those Miu Miu?” Klaus asks, like that heel could be anything else. 

Five sighs. His date looks at Klaus and then at him. She looks confused.

Then Five busts out the ASL, like it’s junior year of high school and they’ve all remembered there’s a foreign language requirement to graduate. Not that Klaus graduated. But he had thought about it enough to take the class. He’d wanted to graduate.

“It’s noisy in here,” Five says. “Let’s go outside.”

On the way out, he asks Klaus how to spell “mew mew.”

Diego and Eudora find them just as Five’s date has opened her handbag. She stops and smiles at the rest of them. Five raises his hand and signs some more at her. She signs back, looking disappointed. Her eyebrows are the only hair on her head and they’re boldly filled in. She’s got bright blue eyeshadow and a brighter red lip. If she asked Klaus to kill someone, he would consider it on the strength of her lipstick alone.

“Who’s the babe?” Diego asks.

“Isn’t it obvious,” Ben says.

“Dolores,” Five says, signing at the same time. “These are my friends, Klaus, Ben, Diego and… Sorry, who are you?”

“Eudora,” she says. “I’m Diego’s… partner.”

“Partner?” Diego says. “Oh, I like that.”

“How do you spell that?” Five asks.

“E-U-D-O-R-A,” she says, and Five can fingerspell as fast as she speaks.

“Everyone,” Five says, flatly. “This is the love of my life.”

She looks at Five and smiles. Then she signs — oh, oh, Klaus remembers this one. He’s pretty sure he’s doing it all wrong, but Klaus replies by sliding his palms against each other and then bringing his fists together with his index fingers up. He tries to introduce himself, even if Five already did, and stumbles through spelling his own name. But Dolores smiles.

At least telling her he knows a little ASL is really easy.

“Holy shit,” Diego says.

“Oh yeah,” Ben says. “You took French, didn’t you?”

“It’s the language of love,” Diego says.

“It was the language Pauline took for her elective,” Ben says.

“Who’s Pauline?” Eudora asks.

Klaus tries to focus on Dolores’ hands and waves his hand at everyone else. “Guys, shut up, I can’t hear her when you’re all talking at the same time.”

“We could go somewhere quiet, and Dolores could use her aids,” Five says. “But I know you idiots would just talk over each other anyway.”

“We can’t leave, we have flowers for Vanya,” Klaus says.

“Oh,” Five says. He uses signs that Klaus knows he should know when chatting with Dolores. It’s like almost being able to listening on a conversation, but not being totally certain what you’re hearing is even a word you know.

“Dolores and I were going to take Vanya out to dinner after this,” Five says.

“Perfect,” Klaus says, waving the bouquet in the air.

“Five?” Allison’s voice asks. “Klaus? Diego?!”

“Excuse me,” Ben says, softly. “I’m here, too.”

“What are all of you doing here?” Allison asks.

Luther follows her, carrying a small child against his giant shoulder. It’s got to be Claire, or else this is a kidnapping. 

“We went to Vanya’s concert,” Klaus says. “Duh. What did you think we requested off for?”

She looks baffled.

“So, did you close the shop again?” Five asks. “That’s bad for our bottom line.”

“No one is buying coffee at eight o’clock at night on a Friday night,” Luther says. Five says something about college finals. 

The little girl lifts her head. She’s as beautiful as her mother. She puts her cheek against Luther’s head.

“Who’s that?” she asks.

“That’s your uncle Five,” Luther says. “And your uncle Ben and your uncle Diego and… Klaus, do you prefer uncle or aunt?”

“Uncle is fine,” Klaus says. 

“And your uncle Klaus,” Luther says. “And the ladies are your aunt Dolores, you remember her, don’t you?”

“Wait, wait,” Diego says. “You’ve already met Dolores?”

“Of course,” Luther says, and Klaus turns just to watch Eudora try to smother the flare-up of Diego’s indignation. It makes him laugh into the bouquet.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you mention that?” Diego asks. “I thought she was a dog!”

“Diego, she’s right there,” Eudora says. “Don’t be like this. Please.”

“You thought my girlfriend was a dog?” Five says. “Wow, Diego, please take this the wrong way: You’re a fucking idiot.”

“Would you both mind _not_ swearing in front of my daughter,” Allison says.

Eudora covers her eyes with the hand she’s not using to hold Diego back. Dolores looks around and then catches Five’s eye. They are chatting in ASL at rapid-fire speed. There’s a lot of eyebrow action.

“Why the fudge,” Diego says. “I meant, why the fudge.”

Claire looks almost as annoyed as her mother and turns her face into Luther’s neck. She whines something muffled about wanting to go home.

“We will,” Luther says. He calls her sweetheart. Klaus sighs. How does Dave feel about children? That’s absolutely the kind of thing he cannot ask in a text message. Even though he wants to.

“Guys?” Vanya’s voice asks.

All as one, the whole mob of them says, “Vanya!”

She startles back a step, like they’ve genuinely frightened her. She blinks a little bit and her mouth falls open. She licks her lips before closing them.

“Wonderful performance tonight,” Five says. 

“You all…” she says. She freezes again, with her lips still parted.

“We got you flowers!” Klaus says. “Really, I got you flowers, but Ben was present and Diego drove. So, kind of a group effort.”

He holds the flowers out with both hands, brandished out between the two of them like a sword. 

Vanya’s lower lip trembles and Klaus feels a sympathetic quiver in his chin like an echo.

“Vanya?” Allison asks. “Is everything okay?”

And then Vanya bursts into tears. It’s not pretty. Klaus certainly once watched himself cry in the mirrored ceiling of someone’s bedroom when he was between blackouts. He knows he’s beautiful, sometimes, when he cries. Maybe as beautiful as he could be in the days when he found himself slipping in and out of consciousness in strangers’ mirrored bedrooms. On the other end of the spectrum of beauty and tears, Vanya has an incredibly handsome face that crumples up and turns blotchy purple-red when she cries. 

Allison swallows her up in a hug and Klaus knows those hugs are very good hugs, so he doesn’t want to intrude. But Vanya reaches out with the hand that’s not holding her violin case, and Klaus tries to put the flowers in her hand. He gets sucked into the hug instead. 

Five comes over to pat Vanya on the shoulder; Klaus grabs him around the neck with one arm.

They all sort of coalesce, after that. Klaus thinks about the wax in a lava lamp fusing back into one lump. Ben’s hand — at least, Klaus thinks that’s Ben’s hand — presses between his shoulders. Vanya’s shoulder presses between Klaus’ ribs right beneath his sternum and it shakes a little bit. He’s kind of being crushed a little, because Diego is very strong and Luther is very big and they might be crushing all of them between their big, stupid shoulders.

“I’m okay,” Vanya says. “I’m okay.”

But they all keep hugging.

“Guys, seriously,” she says, from Allison’s bosom. “I’m okay.”

“It’s been a hard week,” she tells them. “With practice and all.”

She tries to fix her hair, which hangs loose around her face, free from its work-appropriate ponytail. Klaus hands her the now rather crushed-looking bouquet. She sighs at it. Allison laughs a little.

“Mommy,” Claire says. “I’m tired. I wanna go home.”

“God, I feel that,” Vanya says.

“You don’t want to get dinner?” Five asks.

“No, I do,” Vanya says. “I’m starving. But I...” She covers her mouth with her hand when she yawns and nearly hits herself in the face with her violin case. It seems to startle her.

“Seriously,” she says. “Thank you guys for coming. I didn’t… Uh, you didn’t tell me.”

“It was a surprise!” Klaus says. 

“Yeah!” Diego says.

“We want to support you,” Luther says. “You’re…”

“Our sister,” Ben says.

“Well,” Five says. “I always knew that.”

“I think we’ll go. Put Claire to bed and all,” Allison says. “But Vanya…”

Vanya sniffs and smiles up at her.

“It was good to see you,” she says. “Thank you, seriously, for coming.”

They hug again, quickly. Claire only has one eye open, leaning her whole weight against Luther. It’s weird, isn’t it, that Claire and Allison are here, but Luther’s the one carrying a toddler. Dolores is here! Eudora is here! Ben and Vanya are single, as far as Klaus knows. And Luther is… Luther, of course.

Allison catches him looking at her left hand. She nods.

“Oh,” Klaus says, mostly to himself.

Luther leans down so Vanya can give Claire a kiss on the cheek, but she’s half asleep anyway. The goodbyes linger on a little, with Diego telling Luther to drive safely and Klaus awkwardly telling Allison he’ll see her around. His voice isn’t quite in the octave he meant it to be in.

Then Five and Diego get into it over driving and dinner.

“I wanted to take Eudora out,” Diego says. “But if Ben and Klaus want to join you, can you drive them?”

Klaus and Ben have Uber money, but no one is asking them. So instead of suggesting that, Ben and Vanya are talking about a book that Klaus has only seen the cover of — because it was sitting on Ben’s bed and he sat on it. Klaus’ fingers itch. He should take up knitting again. Or learn to crochet! But if he started knitting again, he could learn to make socks. He thinks about knitting a pair of socks in that Air Force blue Dave always wears.

“Klaus?” someone asks.

He looks up and then behind him.

“It is you,” Helen says. 

Klaus swallows. He has to acknowledge her, but isn’t it… Wait, no, it’s not a secret. He works with everyone here except Dolores and there’s no chance that Five hasn’t told her about his good-for-nothing junkie brother who wears dresses.

“Hi, Helen!” he says.

“Hello,” she says. She’s wearing a heavy black coat and carrying a violin case much nicer than Vanya’s. 

“Are we not supposed to…?” Klaus gestures into the space between them. Helen gets this tightness around her mouth and shrugs stiffly.

Vanya turns around and sort of tucks herself into the space behind Klaus’ shoulder. He cranes his neck around to look at her and she looks… shy. Her face is a little puffy from crying earlier.

“You came to watch me perform,” Helen says.

“What?” Klaus asks. “No, I was here to see my sister.”

Then it clicks. The photo in the program was wearing heavy makeup, but... Helen doesn’t wear lipstick or colored eyeshadow to meetings, but she’s still got the eyeshadow on. It looks nice, but dark. It matches the wine color of her dress, peeking out beneath the bottom of her coat.

“Vanya,” Klaus says. “I didn’t know you knew Helen.”

They all stand there for a moment, before Klaus reaches back and puts his arm around Vanya in a way that forces her forward slightly. Now that’s he all tuned in to social cues, or trying at least, Klaus can feel the awkwardness of the silence. Helen, it turns out, is a total bitch.

“Helen… Can I say it?” Klaus asks.

“Go ahead,” she says, even though “Anonymous” is in the fucking name. This would extremely unanonymous and, honestly, Klaus kind of likes Helen.

“Helen is my sponsor,” Klaus says. “At NA.”

Helen smiles in a tight-lipped way.

“Nice to meet you,” Helen says. “Vanya was it?”

“Yes,” Vanya says. “I’ve been in the orchestra for five years.”

“Ah,” Helen says. So, she’s a _huge_ bitch. Klaus isn’t surprised, but also isn’t mad about it or anything.

“Well,” Helen says. “It’s good to see Klaus supporting his family. And I suppose I’ve been missing out. Klaus and Ben are certainly interesting… people.”

“They’re people you can count on,” Vanya says, and Klaus feels his heart squeeze in his chest.

“Are you?” Helen asks. Yep, alright, Klaus definitely always knew Helen was a bitch and he just accepted it. It’s kind of a good thing, for him. Does that mean he’s a bitch, too?

“I… hope so?” Vanya says, uncertainty making her voice pitch up. She almost sounds mad. Actually, she sounds like she thinks the question was directed at her, while Klaus thinks it’s clearly directed at him. 

Helen nods. “We should get coffee some time.”

It’s more of a command than an invitation.

“We’re going for dinner actually, maybe,” Klaus says. “You could come, be my date.”

“No,” Helen says.

“That’s fair,” Klaus says.

“Nice dress,” she says. “And I’ll see you at practice, Vanya?”

“Yes?” Vanya says.

Then Helen turns and leaves, her heels clicking on the cold sidewalk.

“I’m always at practice,” Vanya says.

“She really didn’t know your name?” Ben asks. “After five years?”

Klaus shrugs. “Cocaine can lead to memory loss.”

“Don’t make excuses for her, just because she’s your sponsor,” Ben says, while Vanya shocks them both by saying, “No, I already knew she was kind of an asshole. I’d probably be an asshole, too, if I was the first chair.”

Klaus makes sure to tell her how much he liked the part where she stood up and played solo, how it was the best, and how the whole show gave him so many emotions. He gestures as they move down the sidewalk. The seven of them head to a dinner and even though Luther and Allison aren’t there, it’s the right number of people to feel just like always. Only the responsible siblings are gone!

So, Klaus orders french fries and a chocolate milkshake for dinner. Five orders black coffee, with free refills, and picks off of Dolores’ plate. She gives Klaus her phone number so he can tell her how amazing her outfit is without fumbling through very slow fingerspelling that makes her laugh when he messes up. Ben adds his number and they end up making a group text for the whole table, so Five and Vanya can be included. Diego and Eudora share the booth at Klaus’ back so they can bat their eyelashes at each other in peace. 

The new group text and Dolores’ number are just above Klaus’ most recent text from Dave.

He opens it. He’s left Dave on read since lunch time, which probably even Helen wouldn’t do to someone.

“Sorry for it’s so late! Had a good day off with ben and diego we went to vanyas concert in bos,” Klaus types. 

He adds, “wish i had asked you to come cause the music made me think of you, but i dont know if you like this kind of thing and i didnt want to be weird about it.”

But then he deletes it.

Dave replies around the time Klaus has finished his milkshake. “Sounds fun! I like hearing about your day. See you soon?”

“Yeeeeah!” Klaus types. “For sure!”

As they leave the diner, Klaus tells everyone, “My stomach hurts.”

“Eat real food next time,” Ben says, like he eats any better than Klaus does.

“If you puke in my car, I’m making you walk home,” Diego says.

All Klaus has, in his time of need, is the thought that he’ll probably see Dave tomorrow. He gets a good night text with a heart emoji, even.

But Dave doesn’t come in all weekend. Or Monday. 

On Wednesday, when Dave still hasn’t come by, Klaus types up a text asking how he is, telling him that he misses seeing him at the shop. But it’s weird, isn’t it? He almost asks Ben, but Ben catches him looking and scowls at him.

“What?” he asks, from his seat on break.

“Nothing,” Klaus says, because he’s a coward.

“Have a good one,” he types instead.

“I’m trying,” Dave replies, and Klaus doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. He doesn’t reply.

The forecast calls for ice on Wednesday night, but it melts by the time Klaus wakes up. He opens the window to check and Ben curses. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ben asks. “It’s freezing out there!”

Technically, it is thirty-three degrees out and not freezing, but when Klaus says that Ben throws a paintbrush at him like a javelin. Ben, who wears a hoodie and a leather jacket in fall, pulls a huge, black, puffy parka over the whole thing before he goes out. It swallows him up, so there’s only skinny legs and a forehead sticking out.

“You look like an over-stuffed garbage bag,” Klaus tells him.

“What the fuck are those?” Ben asks, pointing at Klaus’ boots. They’ve got three-inch heels and come up to his knees. He’s laced them on tight today and pulls his fur coat around him. After all, it is getting cold lately.

“They’re my shoes,” Klaus says. He adjusts his sunglasses and his silk scarf.

“It’s gonna freeze again tonight,” Ben says. “It’s supposed to drop to like two.”

“So?” Klaus asks. “I look good.”

“You look like an idiot who is gonna slip on the ice and die,” Ben says.

“I’m not a coward, Benjamin,” Klaus says.

“Alright, die then,” Ben says. “And don’t call me ‘Benjamin.’”

“Well, I can’t call you Benjamin if I’m dead,” Klaus says. “Obviously.”

He has to take his boots off after being at work for twenty minutes. They are not exactly made to be stood in for long periods of time. Ben just smirks at him as he pulls a pair of very flat Converse out of the back room.

The Converse stay on, because Klaus only has tights on under his skirt and his toes get cold on the bare floor. He puts his apron on to protect the blouse he wore, so he almost looks like a real coffee shop employee when Dave arrives.

“Wow,” he says, like he means it. “I like the sunglasses.”

Klaus grins and knocks them down off the top of his head. They fall crookedly on his nose.

“Can’t be looking at that smile without eye protection,” he says. He winks. Dave laughs.

Behind him, Ben groans while making the Americano. Klaus feels relieved just to see Dave, which is stupid.

“How was the concert?” Dave asks.

“Really good,” Klaus says. It made me think of you, Klaus thinks. “Like really, really good. So good. Vanya is _skilled_.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Dave says. “But I was so sick for like, the past _week_. I wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt with my hacking cough.”

“Oh,” Klaus says. He stands up straight and looks at Dave.

“You’re okay now? Right?” Klaus asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dave says, smiling a little. “I’m not going to get you sick don’t worry.”

“Oh, that’s not…” Klaus says. “I could have made you soup.”

“Soup?” Dave asks.

“I mean, it would have been from a can,” Klaus says. “I can’t really cook, but…”

“Canned soup is good,” Dave says. “I like, uh, tomato.”

“Which kind?” Klaus asks. “Like the creamy one? A bisque? The one with clams?”

“Definitely not clams,” Dave says. “Just… regular old Campbell's. The watery, ketchup kind.”

Klaus hums. “Gotta love watered down ketchup.”

“When you’ve got a cold,” Dave says, “it tastes great.”

“No! I agree,” Klaus says. “Fuck chicken noodle. Tomato soup is where it’s at.”

Dave laughs again. He does, Klaus realize, look kind of tired. “I should… go. But you should text me more. It always makes my day.”

“Yeah,” Klaus says, smiling despite himself. “Okay.”

He takes all his coffee and goes. Klaus watches him wave with just his fingertips around the cup holding an Americano.

“Are you not texting him?” Ben asks. “Seriously?”

Klaus tells Ben to shut up. And the day proceeds normally. Diego comes in late to help them clean up and sits around talking shit when there’s not enough to do, while Klaus runs cleaner through the espresso makers and Ben mops. That’s supposed to be Diego’s job, but whatever.

Klaus takes a while to tie his boots up, so Ben tosses him the keys.

“I’m gonna hit up CVS and we can meet at the pizza place to pick something up,” he says.

“Mmmm… Eating pizza at the bus stop when it’s zero degrees out,” Klaus says. “How romantic.”

“Eat a dick,” Ben says. “Or don’t, I guess, since you’re a coward.”

“What?” Klaus says. He stands up and wobbles slightly. “Would a coward be wearing these?!” He kicks out a foot and almost falls over.

He’s got on his long gloves that reach up to his elbows under the loose sleeves of his blouse. Under the blouse, he’s been wearing a black nylon tanktop as an undershirt, so that he’ll be a little warmer. It’s a look, really, with the fur and the glasses and the scarf. And the boots! The boots are the most important part.

Klaus strides out into the frost and locks the door behind him. He tests it, of course, and pulls the metal security door shut. Then locks that, because the plate glass windows and doors would be easy enough to smash. This stuff wouldn’t stop a small sedan, Klaus thinks, if someone drove into the front of the café at 2 a.m. 

Why does he even think of that kind of thing?

Klaus puts the keys for the café into his skirt pocket alongside his wallet and apartment keys. He gathers his coat around him and starts walking into the wind. The melted ice never evaporated, really, and now it’s back. He can avoid some patches by steering around places where the streetlights reflects off the sidewalk too much.

Ben was probably right. This was a poor choice. But Klaus had really hoped he’d see Dave today and, well, in his imagination he hadn’t given up and put on Converse and talked about soup.

Klaus goes around the corner toward the pizza place thinking about all the ridiculous, dramatic, outlandish things he’d like to do in front of Dave — instead of the ones he does.

The street lamp on the corner sputters out. A man in a North Face jacket is around the other side of the corner. Klaus looks up just enough to see the shape of him. His heel slides on a black patch of ice. 

He inhales sharply and tries to catch himself. He feels himself falling slow motion.

Ben was right.

The sidewalk zooms toward Klaus’ face.

He twists as much as he can. And then… 

He stops.

Someone — oh fucking _fuck_ , the guy who was walking toward him — has caught him by the shoulders and pulls him upright. He holds Klaus tight under his arms. He has beautiful eyes peeking out between his knit cap and scarf.

Klaus wants to die, he’s so embarrassed. He feels too warm. His first instinct is to offer to suck the stranger’s dick — but Dave! He feels worse and worse as the man takes his hand off Klaus’ elbow and pulls down his scarf.

“You’re not usually this tall?” the man asks. “Right?”

“Dave!” Klaus says. He moves forward out of excitement — the dick he was gonna offer to put in his mouth is Dave’s! — and slips again. He falls against Dave, who catches him in his arms. Again. 

Dave is smartly wearing boots, real boots. Also, he’s just as strong as he always looks because it feels like Klaus has fallen against a steel door wearing North Face.

“Hey, you okay?” Dave says. “It’s kinda bad out here.” 

Klaus laughs, half-hysterical. He grips onto Dave’s jacket with his gloved hands. The fabric of his gloves is too smooth — rayon or something.

“I’m fine,” he says, still laughing. He’s in Dave’s arms. “Ben did say I would die wearing these today.”

“Well,” Dave says, looking up at him with those beautiful eyes. His nose is getting red from the cold. Klaus can see his breath between them when he speaks. 

“I wouldn’t want that. Glad I could be here.”

Klaus isn’t really that cold. But Dave looks cold, doesn’t he? Maybe Klaus could put his arms around Dave’s waist. That would be warmer. And maybe he could lean a little more on him, too, for stability.

“Fuck! Me too! Can you even imagine?” Klaus asks. He’s still laughing. “I was fully expecting to bounce off the frozen ass sidewalk like a badly inflated football.”

He squeezes his arms around Dave and feels that branded jacket deflate a little. It must be very warm, but Dave’s face is all red from the cold. “But you saved me!”

“Oh,” Dave says. He blinks.

“Shit, well, I guess?” Dave says. “I’m sure anyone would have.”

Klaus laughs hard and Dave’s arms move from the back of his arms to his back. Klaus can feel them even through his heavy fur coat. It doesn’t smell very good, but Dave doesn’t seem to mind. At least, if he’s touching it, he can’t find it that unpleasant.

“No, no,” Klaus says. “Definitely not.”

Every year there are new college students and new Air Force guys in town. Usually, they have to meet Diego and Luther before they stop calling Klaus a lot of things that aren’t even very accurate and certainly aren’t kind. Half of this town would probably be happy to see him smash his brains out on a frozen sidewalk in these heels. The other half would just walk by. He’s passed out in enough public places to know that most people just don’t care. Certainly, they don’t care as much as kind people — people like Dave — think they do.

“Oh,” Dave says. “Well, then, good thing I was in the neighborhood?”

And then Dave smiles at him, all up close. He must have the worst view of Klaus as Klaus’s chin is practically tucked into his neck and he’s doing something weird with his eyebrows, like they’ve gotten trapped in his hairline.

The theme for that old-ass Spider-Man cartoon gets stuck in Klaus’ head, but not all the lyrics of course. Just “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.” And shit, Dave would probably look so good in full-body spandex.

Like, so good. Even through a down-stuffed jacket and probably more layers, he’s just so solid. Klaus just knows he must have abs and he still hasn’t seen them. But he must _have_ them. Alright, Klaus is at a point maybe where the abs are just a distraction. If Dave doesn’t have a six-pack that Klaus could scrub laundry on like an Oregon Trail pioneer coming to ruin civilization and create the whitest state on the continent, then Klaus would still really like to…

To…

How long have they been standing out here?

“Hey, wow,” Dave says. “It’s really cold out here. I left the Midwest to get away from this shit. You wanna, uh, go get coffee or something.”

And then the smile drops off his face.

“That was so stupid,” Dave says. “You literally work at a coffee shop. You’re… are you just getting off work?”

“Yeah!” Klaus says, and then he realizes in a terror that Dave might think he’s saying that getting coffee is a stupid idea. “Wait, no! Yes, I just locked up, so sorry. No Umbrella coffee. But it’s fine, I get free coffee all the time. You don’t have to buy me coffee! I mean it’s super sweet, wow, no one offers to buy me coffee.”

“Because you work at a coffee shop and that would be stupid?” Dave asks. He’s making a face that Klaus suspects is directed at himself. It’s amused, but it’s certainly not a smile and Klaus just doesn’t like the whole vibe of it.

“No, because no one thinks of buying me stuff,” Klaus says. “Except you. Just now.”

“Well, I’ll buy you coffee,” Dave says. “If you want.”

“Right now?” Klaus asks, because he’s not sure.

“Yeah,” Dave says. “If you’re free.”

Klaus squeezes the solid brick of Dave’s body in his arms.

“I am so free,” Klaus says. “But the only places that are open are gonna be the pizza place — they don’t have coffee, I think. And this one diner. Their coffee is so bad, I think our boss wants to actually blow that place up cause he hates their coffee. Wait, is Five the boss?” Klaus scowls. “Maybe it’s actually Luther. But anyway, I meant Five.”

“I’ve met him,” Dave says. “He’s very… strict.”

“Short, you mean,” Klaus says.

“Hey, that’s not very fair,” Dave says. “Everyone is short compared to you in those heels.”

Klaus smiles. God, he loves these boots — and so does Dave!

“You like them?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Dave says, and he sighs. Then he coughs.

“Uh, I mean,” Dave says. “The diner is Griddy’s right? Don’t they have hot chocolate there, too?” 

“Oh yeah definitely!” Klaus says. “And that stuff’s great I mean it’s probably just Swiss Miss but I —” 

“Could I buy you a cup?” Dave asks.

“— totally love Swiss Miss don’t get me wrong,” Klaus plows forward with what he was saying. It’s just like the soup conversation. “I... Wait, really?” 

“Yeah,” Dave says. He smiles again. And they’re so close together that Klaus has to tuck his chin in even more just to see Dave’s teeth. But he wants to. Even if he’s ugly like this and Dave can see up his nose.

No one buys things for Klaus unless he _needs_ them, like Ben spotting him for rent or food. People don’t buy things for Klaus just because they want to and, of course, he understands. He doesn’t need things. He’s sparking joy and folding his socks these days. Also, he spent so many years begging for money and selling anything he was given — or anything he took. Everyone gets into habits. So what if everyone’s habit is to never give Klaus money or anything he can sell? That’s just smart, really. That’s just good sense.

And, maybe, to a certain extent, Klaus has the same habits. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t ever send the texts he writes to Dave… Maybe Klaus doesn’t let people give him things, because he would have to give something first. Wouldn’t he?

His voice comes out soft and small from somewhere in his throat, “I’d really like that.”

“Is it alright if I hold onto your arm?” Dave says. “Or you can hold onto me? I promise I won’t slip.”

“If you do,” Klaus says. “We’ll just go down together!”

He laughs and the awful double-meanings don’t hit him right away, even though Klaus has a capsizing ship tattooed on his forearm.

Dave steps back and offers his right arm to Klaus like a liferaft. All of him is solid under the puffy jacket. Klaus wraps both arms around Dave’s arm and takes a tentative, wobbly, baby-deer step. Carefully they turn so they can walk side by the side on the iced-over sidewalk. Klaus still looks out for patches that reflect the light, but mostly he leans against Dave. Is this what trust feels like?

Dave stops when Klaus’ heel slides slightly.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Klaus says. “Let’s keep going. I want hot chocolate. Hey, isn’t that the name of the song in ‘The Full Monty’?”

“I don’t think so,” Dave says. “But maybe?”

“Wait!” Klaus says. His next step leaves him hanging off of Dave for support again, because he’s not looking where he’s going. “Hot Chocolate’s the band. The song is ‘Leave Your Hat On.’”

“‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’?” Dave asks.

Klaus repeats it back to him, but in song. “You can leave your hat on, you can leave your hat on!”

“I will,” Dave says. “Cause it’s fucking cold.”

But he hasn’t moved his scarf back up over his nose and mouth. He keeps his scarf down the whole way to Griddy’s. They talk about male strippers in movies and whether Channing Tatum is hot or not. 

“He’s not really my type,” Dave says. 

“Alright, alright, but who is your type?” Klaus asks. Then, he realizes that sounds a lot like fishing for compliments, because Dave stops walking and turns his face towards Klaus. Klaus turns and looks at him. The sign for Griddy’s reflects off the water on the road that’s been melted by passing cars.

“Not me!” he says. “Like famous queers you’d want to see in a stripper movie! That type!”

Dave hums and starts walking again. Klaus sighs. They take small steps down the block.

“Maybe Ezra Miller,” Dave says.

“I have no idea who that is,” Klaus says.

“‘Perks of Being A Wallflower’?” Dave asks.

“Never seen it,” Klaus says. “Or, maybe I have? Honestly, my memory’s pretty shoddy.”

“It’s a teen movie,” Dave says. “So, it’s not really… I mean, it’s cool if you haven’t seen it or don’t want to. I just couldn’t say, like, John Boyega. I don’t think he’s queer.”

“Oh my God!” Klaus says. “Stripper Star Wars!”

“Is that just Return of the Jedi?” Dave asks. “Like, but everyone could have a metal bikini.”

“I would so be into wearing that,” Klaus says. “Collar, shackles, leash, everything.”

Dave looks at him again and he’s got a big smile, like he’s trying not to laugh but he really might.

“I am totally serious,” Klaus says.

“I’m sure you are,” Dave says. “But I don’t want to get choked to death.”

“Hey! Hey!” Klaus says. “In this you are one-hundred percent a Han Solo. You’re even a pilot!”

“I’m in the Air Force,” Dave says, “but I’m not a pilot.”

“Oh,” Klaus says. “Oops.”

“I’m like… uh, you’ve seen the new movies?” Dave asks. Klaus nods. “I’m a Rose Tico in real life.”

Klaus’ eyebrows rise. “So _I_ get to be John Boyega?”

Dave reaches out for the door and pulls it open, guiding Klaus through on his slippery, ice-caked heels. “I guess.”

“Hey!” Klaus says, maybe too loud. “I heard you think he’s hot.”

Dave laughs and unzips his North Face. Klaus unloops his scarf from around his neck. A nice older woman smiles at them — the same Agnes who has worked here since Klaus was a child sneaking out with his weird foster siblings.

“It’s pretty dead in here tonight,” she says. “Why don’t you seat yourselves?”

There are nice little out of the way booths, of course, far from anything. But Dave looks to Klaus and Klaus looks to the window booth.

“If you’re okay with it?” he asks. He’s pulling off his fur coat already and slinging it over his arm. He taps the scuffed toes of his shiny, knee-high boots against the floor to knock the dirt and ice off his heels. The linoleum diner floor is slippery, but not as bad as the sidewalk outside.

They sit down and a very tired, much younger woman comes to take their order. Her little white apron has residual coffee stains on it and ties above a slightly pregnant stomach.

“How can I help you tonight?” she asks.

Klaus takes off his sunglasses and says, “I’d like a cup of hot chocolate.”

“Oh my god,” she says. “Klaus?”

He blinks. “Yes?”

“I would… No, I guess, the hair?” she says. “I’m… Okay, wait, we dated when I was twenty and you were… My hair was like purple and I — this is so embarrassing — I made everyone call me Belladonna.”

“Oh!” Klaus says. “Holy shit!”

“Yeah!” she says. “I thought you moved to like, L.A.”

“Well, you know,” Klaus says. “I came back. After rehab.”

“Cool, cool,” she says. “Obviously, uh, I know that whole circus.” 

She pats her belly and Klaus notices a ring on her finger. Her hair is brown now with some grey in it.

“Hey, how old were you anyway?” she asks. “Is that weird to ask? Is this… oh, no, are you on a date?”

Klaus smiles awkwardly and looks at Dave.

“Don’t mind me,” Dave says.

“I’ll go! Agnes can take over!” Belladonna says. “One hot chocolate, right? And…”

“Sorry, I wasn’t really ready to order,” Dave says. “Just water for now.”

“Okay,” she says. “Hot chocolate and water.”

Belladonna walks away in sensible, flat shoes. Klaus lays his fur coat and scarf on the booth beside him and starts to peel off his gloves.

“You look really, really good today,” Dave says.

“Thanks,” Klaus says. “I was really trying, but that was like twelve hours ago and I’m sure it’s…” He waves his bare hand.

“It’s, uh,” Dave says. “I mean, I’m impressed.”

Klaus looks down and then up at Dave who is just _looking_ at him. Dave drops his gaze to the formica table top. Klaus’ chest feels too tight.

“Could this be a date?” Klaus asks.

“Yeah,” Dave says. “I’d really like that.”

“Me too,” Klaus says. He puts his hands on the table and Dave reaches out to brush his fingers over Klaus’.

Dave uses his other hand to grab one of the folded, laminated menus tucked behind a little jukebox.

“Do you want anything?” he asks. 

“Oh,” Klaus says. “I was gonna have pizza with Ben and I’m not… Just hot chocolate is fine, you don’t have to.”

Dave makes a sort of worried face. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Klaus says. “I’m not even hungry!”

When Agnes comes through, she smiles. 

“I remember you, too,” she says, to Klaus. “You and your family used to come here in the middle of the night and drink milkshakes until you were sick.”

Dave is looking at Klaus after that. But he orders a basket of chicken strips and a side of deep-fried cheese sticks.

“I’m so sorry,” Klaus says.

“It’s a small town,” Dave says. “I get it! If we were… Yeah.” He shakes his head. “Someday I’ll take you to where I grew up and everyone can tell you about how they remember how I went stag to prom in a plaid jacket from Goodwill.”

Klaus’ chest gets tighter, somehow. “Plaid?”

“I thought it was punk,” Dave says.

“Well, I was a goth,” Klaus says. “So clearly we would have gotten along.”

“Honestly,” Dave says. “You’re too cool for me now, and I’m sure you would have been too cool for me in high school.”

Klaus snorts. “Well that’s just… I mean, I still appreciate you for your physique, so it’s ok if you’re not super smart. Because, clearly you missed it, I am not too cool for anybody.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Dave asks.

“No,” Klaus says. “I do my eyeliner by feeling. That’s why it looks like this.”

Dave laughs. Klaus grins with pride at himself. They talk about high school, then, about Klaus dating people too old for him and going to college parties where business majors snorted cocaine off folding tables and how there might also be impromptu board games involving vampires and Cthulhu. Dave talks about dating a girl who was his best friend and how he told her that he wanted to wait until marriage to kiss someone.

“I hope you aren’t holding to that now,” Klaus says.

“No!” Dave says, horrified.

“Okay, because I’m not really marriage material,” Klaus says.

Dave reaches out and rubs the fabric of Klaus’ blouse sleeve between his fingers. He hums. Before either of them can can say anything more, the food arrives.

“So kosher,” Klaus says. “But clearly not lactose intolerant.”

“I also like pineapple on pizza now,” Dave says. “It gave some of my buddies fits. Especially Jazzy.”

“Who’s Jazzy?” Klaus asks.

“She’s… Jasmine,” Dave sighs. “The one who called you Cookie that night.”

“Oh!” Klaus says. “With the…” He mimes out suspenders against his own chest. Dave nods sharply and squeezes ketchup into the basket with his chicken strips.

He’s wearing a faded grey button-up shirt over what Klaus guesses is some of that Underarmor stuff. The sport-y skintight kind of thing. It peeks out over the few open buttons. Klaus watches him pick up a chicken strip and tear it in half. Klaus reaches for a cheese stick.

“Please,” Dave says, holding chicken in both hands. “Help yourself.”

“You can call me Cookie, if you want,” Klaus says, just as Dave takes a bite.

Dave freezes, and there’s a long pause while Dave chews and swallows and wipes his mouth against the back of his hand and then with a napkin.

“I’d rather call you Klaus,” he says. “It’s such a nice name.”

“So’s Dave,” Klaus says. “It sounds kinda like ‘babe,’ doesn’t it? And, if I’m going to call you babe — Wait, can I call you babe?”

Dave’s cheeks are a little pink. 

“I mean,” Dave says. “Yes.”

“Well, okay then,” Klaus says. “Then I can be your homemade chocolate-chip cookie, if you want.”

He stuffs an entire cheese stick in his face and it burns the roof of his mouth slightly, so he stuffs chewed up cheese and breading to the sides of his cheeks like a chipmunk. Dave watches him do it and he somehow only gets pinker.

“Is this a good time for you?” Dave asks. “I mean, I’ve been trying to figure out when you’re free, but you always seem… busy.”

Klaus doesn’t want to explain that he thinks he looks like microwaved dogshit after work and he always smells like cleaning products and stale milk. Because he does right now, plus the raunchy fur coat. He literally went ass over tits into Dave’s arms in a big pair of dominatrix heels, so if Dave thinks this is a good first date. Well, Klaus can only aim upwards.

“I’m free on Tuesdays,” Klaus says. “But I have meetings.”

“I don’t want to disrupt your life,” Dave says. “I’d just… I’d like to see you outside work.”

“That’s so weird,” Klaus says.

“Is it?” Dave says.

“Yeah!” Klaus says. “You… actually like me? That’s weird as hell.”

“Okay,” Dave says. “Then let’s be weird.”

Klaus smiles and the tight feeling comes back. He grabs another cheese stick.

“Sometimes I write out texts to you and then I don’t send them, cause they’d be too weird,” he says.

“Really?” Dave asks. “That’s funny, because I write out texts to you and then delete them because they’re, uh, Jazzy says they’re too thirsty.”

Klaus rushes to swallow half a cheese stick. He coughs up crumbs of breading into his fist. “Wow, fuck Jazzy,” he says. “I work at a coffee shop. I love thirsty people.”

Dave laughs out loud.

Kicking out, Klaus taps Dave’s boot with his own. It makes Dave lift his chin slightly.

“Okay, no I don’t,” Klaus says. “But you’re, uh, do you know how hot you are? You are so hot and, no, you can’t be too thirsty. I set the standard for that and you can’t possibly be thirstier than I am.”

“Really?” Dave asks. “Maybe I can.”

“It’s impossible,” Klaus says. “I am crawling through Death Valley at this very moment, dragging my tender bits over a cactus. I am weak with dehydration, the vitality draining from my limbs. But I continue, because I saw a sign pointing this direction that said ‘shirtless pictures of Dave.’”

Dave laughs so hard he puts his head down on the table next to his chicken strips. Klaus takes the opportunity to steal another cheese stick even though he hasn’t finished the one he has now. So he does that and has a sip of hot chocolate, with the whip cream all melted into it. It feels so good to not be lactose intolerant right now. Dave is still shaking with laughter.

Klaus gives him a break then, lets him eat his chicken. They talk about thrift shops and what patterns Klaus likes the most. Neither Agnes nor Belladonna stop by to check on them. Dave drips ketchup on the table because he’s holding a chicken strip in one hand but takes Klaus’ cheese-stick greasy hand in his other.

“Do you like art?” Klaus asks. He wants to take Dave to one of the galleries that shows Ben’s paintings and helps them pay the rent.

“Yeah,” Dave says. “What kind of person doesn’t like art?”

Later, Dave says, “What if I took off on a Tuesday? Would you want to, uh, ride on my motorcycle?”

“Oh fuck yes,” Klaus says. And if he thinks about that too much he’s gonna pop a stiff in the diner he’s been going to since he was a teen sneaking out of his not-an-orphanage house.

Dave asks other weird, obvious questions, like “Can I text you more than once in a row?” and “Could I call you sometime? Like if I texted first? I just like talking to you.”

“We never had a birthday rewards thing,” Klaus tells him. “I just wanted to know your birthday so I could give you a muffin.”

“Really?” Dave asks. “Wow… That’s…”

“Super fucking creepy,” Klaus says.

“Sweet,” Dave says. “It was really the best birthday I ever had. I should have done something for your birthday.”

“You did!” Klaus says. “You came back from Texas!”

“That’s not —,” Dave says. “Damnit, you’re so sweet. You really are a chocolate chip cookie.” And then he goes absolutely red in the face and stares at the greasy, empty plates in front of him.

“Could I give you a ride?” Dave asks, after flagging down Belladonna for the check.

“That would be…” Klaus digs his phone out to check the time and the bus schedule.

“Have fun on your date you fucker,” reads a message from Ben. 

“Oh shit,” Klaus says. There are a lot of texts from Ben, spanning back over the two and a half hours they’ve been sitting in this dinner. Most of them ask where he is and if he’s dead.

“Spotted you in the Griddy’s window being gay,” one of them reads. It’s followed by, “I’m happy for you, Klaus.”

“What’s wrong?” Dave asks.

“Nothing,” Klaus says. “It would be great, actually, if you could drive me.”

Dave pays for everything and lets Klaus cling to him on the walk out. This time Klaus clutches Dave’s waist and Dave holds him by an arm across his shoulders. Klaus feels warm and full of cheese, both figuratively and quite literally. His mouth is slimy inside with milk fat and deep fried grease.

Dave’s car warms up nicely and smells like air freshener and coffee. Klaus feels comfortable right away. There’s all kinds of special tags and a special licenses plate, even, which is probably military stuff that Klaus doesn’t understand. He can just roll with it, though. 

Klaus pulls up Google maps so that he can give Dave directions to his apartment.

“Coming home honey,” he texts Ben. “Daves driving me.”

“Well, you can’t fuck here,” Ben says. “I am in the apartment.”

“Not the kind of girl who fucks on the first date,” Klaus replies. He looks over at Dave, though, in his North Face jacket and his curls all fucked up from the knit hat he was wearing the whole time they were in the diner. Klaus bites his lip. He wishes he was that kind of girl.

But he can’t do that sober. He actually… Oh, boy, he has never had sex sober, maybe? If he has to think about it, then probably not. That’s something he should probably unpack another time.

Anyway, Dave has a real job and has to be up in the morning.

He idles his car in the slush in front of Klaus’ apartment building. Klaus watches Dave move his hands on the steering wheel and stretch his arms out until his elbows lock. His jacket makes little sounds every time he moves.

Dave looks over at him.

“This is it, right?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Klaus says. He looks at Dave’s mouth.

“I had a really nice time,” Dave says. “I’m…” He looks up at the fabric-covered ceiling of his car. “I’m glad I ran into you tonight.”

“Me too,” Klaus says. “Like… I could have died.”

“Don’t say that,” Dave says. 

“But actually,” Klaus says. “This is… That was actually the best date I can ever remember being on.”

“Oh no,” Dave says. “That’s worse! Klaus… It was just a diner.”

“But it was with you,” Klaus says. “And we talked for hours and you let me eat your cheese sticks. I never knew it could be… like this.”

“Like this?” Dave asks. He reaches out like he’s going to touch Klaus’ face and Klaus leans toward his hand. He turns and puts his whole upper body into the space over Dave’s gear shift.

Dave’s fingers are warm against his cheek. Klaus closes his eyes.

“Like this,” Klaus says.

“I want to kiss you,” Dave says. “Can I?”

Klaus reaches down and hits the button so his seat belt pops open. He slips his arm through and moves toward Dave like he means it. He has to open his eyes to do it, but that means he gets to see Dave looking at him.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since we met,” Klaus says. 

He breathes right in Dave’s face. He’s gonna press Dave up against his own car door like this. And he does. Klaus tilts his face more into the curve of Dave’s hand and reaches for those already mussed up curls. Dave’s lips are warm. There’s a bit of stubble above his upper lip that scratches Klaus’ lips. He licks out. Dave’s mouth opens to him. Dave’s hair is soft and dry, staticky between Klaus’ fingers. Dave tastes like ketchup. He licks past Klaus’ front teeth.

Klaus is getting hard.

He should stop.

Dave’s head taps against the glass behind him, the driver’s side window. Klaus’ bare knuckles touch the freezing cold glass.

Klaus pulls back, so that Dave won’t get cold against the window.

“You’re so beautiful,” Klaus says.

“Look who’s talking,” Dave says.

“I wanna date you,” Klaus says. “More.”

“Okay,” Dave says.

“But please keep coming to buy coffee,” Klaus says. “I just like seeing you.”

“I like that too,” Dave says. “I mean, seeing you.”

“Okay,” Klaus says. “Alright, I have to go.”

He moves back into the passenger seat of Dave’s car. Dave runs a hand through his own hair and sighs. He looks so warm and flushed. Klaus wants him so bad. He’s gonna go jerk off in the bath after this.

“See you tomorrow,” Klaus says.

“I’ll text you,” Dave says.

“I’m gonna text you the weird shit now,” Klaus says. “You’re gonna regret it, Dave.”

Dave smiles and he is so, so, so beautiful that Klaus aches all over. “Sleep well, Klaus.”

Klaus shakes himself and slaps his own cheeks a little. His opera gloves are stuffed in his skirt pockets now, so he’s gonna have to touch a freezing cold door handle real soon.

“I will!” Klaus says. “Drive safe, take care, please text me.”

“I will!” Dave says. He leans over as Klaus shuts the car door, and Klaus thinks about just throwing himself back into the car. He could live in a car! He could suck a dick in a car!

But, really, he couldn’t. Not sober. So he digs out a glove and slips it on one hand, all bunched up around his wrist. He gets his keys out. He can’t wait to do this again. He looks over his shoulder and Dave’s car is still idling outside. It stays there until Klaus is inside. He looks at it through the glass as he pushes in the security code for the stairwell door. Dave stays to make sure he gets in safely. It’s enough to make Klaus stop and put his hand on the railing. He just breathes.

There’s only this moment, he thinks, and it’s really, really good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is actually Joe Cocker. But Hot Chocolate does "You Sexy Thing." Also, I am lactose intolerant. Life is very hard.
> 
> I promise more is coming (or at least, I hope it is!)


	6. Coda: "Hello, handsome"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit from Dave's perspective.

The most beautiful man in the world is just doing just his job. That’s what Dave tells himself. He’s just doing his job. That’s why he said, “Come back tomorrow!”

But when tomorrow happens, Aimee is still out sick.

“If I don’t get my coffee,” Capt. Chandler says, “I don’t know what’s going to happen today.”

Dave grabs his keys. “I’m on it, Captain.”

It’s oh six hundred forty one. Dave is off base before oh seven hundred.

After lunch, he quietly approaches her and says, “Third coffee, ma’am?”

“Sergeant,” Cha-cha says. “Sergeant Katz, you are the only man in this operation I trust… To get my coffee for me.”

Dave laughs, and he can see that Cha-cha almost smiles. 

The most beautiful man in the world does not work mornings, and Dave worries maybe he doesn’t work today at all. But Dave sees him through the window and almost freezes. He’s folded up in a chair reading a book. His body his curled, all long lines from his lean jaw and long neck to his perfect toes. Dave walks faster, because he’s here to buy coffee and not be a fucking pervert.

But the most beautiful man in the world lifts his head when Dave opens the door gently.

“Are you busy?” Dave asks.

“No,” the man says.

“I don’t want to interrupt your break,” Dave says. But he would really, really like if Klaus made his coffee. Because if Klaus makes the coffee then Dave can talk to him and pretend, for at least this time, that Klaus doesn’t just joke with every customer. That they’re really flirting.

Obviously, Dave has to watch himself. Because Klaus is at work. Klaus has to be nice to him. God knows what kind of money he makes and Klaus looks like he’s still a student. Maybe literature? He is too stylish to be into math or something. But maybe Dave is being presumptuous.

“He’s not on break,” Klaus’ coworker says. Ben, Dave remembers. His name is Ben. He’s also ridiculously hot, but Dave thinks maybe Ben doesn’t like him. 

“Oh,” Dave says. “Well, I walked by and —”

“Nope!” Klaus shouts. “Not on break! Just a lazy piece of shit!”

Dave blinks. Did something happen before he walked in? It looked like the café wasn’t busy at all right now. He had tried to pick a time after the lunch rush.

“Hey man,” Dave says. “I read at work, too.” 

He’s not picking sides. And if he was picking sides, he’s not just picking Klaus’ side because he’s got the most perfect green eyes that Dave has ever seen.

He realizes that he is still standing in the half-open door. He sees Ben looking at him when he walks the rest of the way into the café.

Klaus wears the tightest pants — they might not even be pants, Dave’s not sure. He has the longest legs and he’s graceful as a dancer. Maybe he is a dancer, Dave thinks. Boston’s not far. He’s obviously very comfortable not wearing shoes.

Don’t be a pervert, Dave reminds himself.

“Don’t worry!” Klaus says. “I mop this floor!”

Dave blinks.

“We don’t all violate the health code,” Ben tells him. “It’s really just Klaus. Please don’t report us.”

Dave keeps blinking. “I wouldn’t.”

Ben stares at him and Dave feels like he’s being put under a microscope. Can Ben read his mind? No, that’s ridiculous. People can’t read minds. 

Can they?

“What can I get you?” Ben asks.

Dave gives the office order, and then the office card.

“Coming right up!” Klaus says. Dave looks up and he’s already at the espresso machine looking over his shoulder and smiling. Dave’s heart drops into his stomach — or lower, if he’s being honest. But Dave can’t help but smiling back, even if he can feel his ears heating up.  He swallows.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ben asks.

Dave’s heart almost stops working. He doesn’t even fucking breathe.

But it’s Klaus who answers, “Nothing!”

“I just like coffee! Do you like coffee?” he asks.

“Yeah, obviously,” Ben says.

Dave watches Klaus making eight cups of coffee and he can’t even speak. Klaus still smiles at him, and he saved Dave from having to answer Ben. 

Say something, Dave thinks. But all he can think is, “I like coffee, too.” Which, obviously, he’s here and he’s buying coffee. The silence stretches out. Klaus knows that Dave is watching him, that he’s staring. Maybe gawking is the word. This is creepy, isn’t it? Dave is being creepy.

“Your receipt is ready,” Ben says. “Don’t forget your card.”

Dave shakes his head a little. He folds the receipt around the card and tucks it into his pocket. Then he gets out his wallet. What’s the appropriate tip to leave for being that weird horny guy at the coffee shop? He puts in a five dollar bill.

He looks at the coffee and, yeah, he needs some of that right now.

“Which are, uh,” Dave stops himself from saying “kosher.” “Undoctored?”

Klaus looks at him like he’s got three heads. “Well, they’re all doctored. In a way.”

Then Klaus smiles, “Doctored up by me.”

Dave can breathe again suddenly. He even smiles back a little. A joke! A good one, even.

Klaus points out the cups and then shows Dave the unmarked side. “See? Blank as fuck.”

Dave chews on the inside of his cheek. Klaus is still holding one of the three black coffees. Dave reaches for that one specifically. His fingers almost touch Klaus’.

“Careful,” Klaus says. “It’s hot.”

“So are you,” Dave thinks, right before he burns his tongue on a swallow of coffee.

Ben finishes making the Americano.

“I like your coffee,” Dave says, because he still hasn’t thought of anything better to say. 

Well, there’s things he wants to say. But he’d owe Klaus a lot more than five dollars. Also what does Dave think this is? A brothel? It’s a coffee shop. He can hear Jazzy’s voice in his head telling him to slow his roll. Jazzy doesn’t even know about Klaus or the coffee shop — yet.

“And, I mean, my boss loves your coffee,” Dave says. “So you must be doing something right.”

The Americano stands next to the other coffees. Dave puts his coffee back in the holder before he picks everything up. The cardboard digs into his fingers.

Dave’s mom’s voice says, “What are you, ungrateful?” as he turns around.

“Thanks Klaus!” Dave says, but over his shoulder. It’s not the best.

“And Ben!” Wow, shit, yeah, Ben is going to hate him.

“See you tomorrow!” Klaus says.

Dave sighs once he gets out the café’s front door. Cha-cha sings his praises, which just makes him feel like a real brown-noser. But better that everyone think he’s sucking his superior officer’s dick than the truth: he wants to suck the guy at the coffee shop’s dick.

Dave offers to get the coffee the next day. 

Klaus isn’t there.

“He’s off today,” Ben tells him.

“Well, I hope he has a great day off,” Dave says. 

“My day off is tomorrow,” Ben says.

Dave blinks. Wait, Ben doesn’t like him. Or does he?

“Have a good one, too,” Dave says. “Is it nice being off on weekdays?”

“You can get a lot done,” Ben says. “Because everyone’s off on Saturdays, y’know? Plus, I never have to see high schoolers.”

Dave nods. 

Ben doesn’t hate him. Klaus will be back tomorrow.

Aimee comes back from sick leave, but Dave takes over the coffee runs. Every morning and after lunch. He never forgets. Cha-cha never falls into the three o’clock slump again. Klaus remains the most, most, most beautiful human being in the world. 

Dave doesn’t know for sure anymore if he can say the most beautiful man in the world. Ben calls Klaus “him” though. Dave’s not sure how to ask, so he mentions it to Ben one afternoon.

“He’ll be thrilled if you just ask,” Ben says. “No matter how stupidly you ask it.”

And it doesn’t seem unfair. Klaus asks Dave all kinds of questions, especially on the weekends when Dave stops by for lunch. 

“What pronouns do you… like?” Dave asks. “Uh, person pronouns. I mean, personal pronouns.”

Klaus leans on the counter and rests his jaw against his fist. His cheek squishes up against his knuckles until it makes his whole face look soft and cute. The skin creases around only one of his big, green eyes. He’s almost winking.

“Any is fine, really, they’re all completely lovely,” Klaus says. “But I like he and him. So please, use those.”

He affects a high-pitched voice. “Oh, that Klaus, _he_ ’s the weirdest guy in Massachusetts.”

“You’re not,” Dave says, maybe too quickly.

“What pronouns do you like?” Klaus says.

“I’m boring,” Dave says, shrugging. “He and him. I’ve never thought about it much.”

Maybe when he was very young, but he learned quickly what happens to people who do things like that. Klaus is… Klaus obviously knows, too, and he doesn’t give a fuck. He’s beautiful and funny and so brave that it makes Dave feel like a coward just for not telling him. Someone’s probably already telling him that, right? 

It gives Dave a lot to think about as he eats a roast beef sandwich and slowly, very slowly, drinks his medium black coffee. It’s perfect. He spends the rest of the weekend thinking about it and feeling kind of full, but hungry. It’s a metaphor. But also not, because it’s a pretty good sandwich and a really good coffee.

The very next weekend, Klaus says, “If you were stranded on a desert island… No, wait, if you were stranded on a dessert island, like an island made of desserts, what kind of desserts would you want the island to be made of? I want to be stranded on an island made of flan de coco.”

Dave laughs really hard; a wheezing, aching kind of laugh. The best part of it, though, past the tears that threaten to come into Dave’s eyes, is how proud Klaus looks for making him laugh.

“Chocolate chip cookies,” Dave tells Klaus. He thinks of his mom. He should call her tonight. He wishes he could tell her about Klaus. But who can he tell?

“Put me on an island made of chocolate chip cookies and I’d never leave,” Dave says. “That could be my new home. I’d be happy forever.”

“Your favorite?” Klaus asks. He’s leaning more over the counter, both arms braced on the counter where the coffee goes, and pushing himself up so he’s much taller than Dave.

“Yeah, I love chocolate chip cookies,” Dave says. He’s thinking of homemade, of his mother.

“Even the store-bought kind?” Klaus says. “How would you feel about an island made of Chips Ahoy?”

“Fine by me,” Dave says. Then, he takes his sandwich and coffee to go, because otherwise he’ll stand here all Saturday talking to Klaus. It’s what he wants to do with his weekend. But it’s probably not what Klaus wants to do. There are other customers, anyway.

Cameron stops him as he’s walking to the dormitory by shouting, “Hey, Dave!” across the parking lot.

Dave laughs and waits. He sips his coffee as Cam jogs down the line of cars.

“Dave, Dave,” Cam says. “So glad I caught you, man, Jazzy was thinking of going out tonight because none of us have check ins.”

“Is she letting us stay at hers?” Dave asks. The coffee has cooled to the most drinkable temperature and it’s hard for Dave not to finish it off right now. He still has a sandwich to eat.

“Yeah, yeah, obviously,” Cam says.

Dave nods. He’s thinking about Klaus again. How late does he work? The café doesn’t close until really late. Does Klaus go out on Saturdays or on the days he has off? What kind of places does he like? Klaus doesn’t look like a dive bar and karaoke kind of guy, but Dave still gets a vivid image of Klaus in those super tight pants he wears bending over a pool table and grinning at him. He’s so… long. It’s easy to imagine.

“Dave?” Cam asks.

“Yeah,” Dave says. “We’re on. I’ll drive, it’s no problem.”

“Ah, shit yeah, thanks man,” Cam says.

Dave sighs. He wasn’t actually paying attention, but at least he guessed correctly. He sips his coffee again as Cam jogs back across the parking lot.

The sandwich is just alright — it would’ve been better if Dave had stretched his coffee out a little better.

The guys on either side of him in the dormitory invite him to watch pirated movies that afternoon, but Dave spends half the time on his phone. Jazzy keeps texting him about all her plans for the night. 

There’s still time for Dave to call home after dinner.

He feels himself holding his breath while the phone rings.

“Hello?” his mother’s voice asks.

“Hi, Mom,” Dave says.

“David!” she says. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“No,” Dave says. “I was just thinking of you today, thought I’d give you a call.”

“Well, I appreciate it,” she says. “It’s always good to hear from you, sweetie.”

“How are you?” he asks.

“Oh, you know,” she says. He can hear her moving around the house, but there are no voices in the background. A door opens and closes.

“The usual,” she says. “Took on some extra shifts at the Pig. Patty’s having her baby soon and they moved house. Jonathan’s taking courses on criminal justice. Talking about becoming police.”

Dave hums in the right spots.

“Could really use you boys’ help around here,” she says. “This place has a yard I can’t keep up with.”

“Craig’s not helping with it?” Dave asks. 

“Oh!” she says. “Of course he is. Don’t be like that, Dave. He’s just busy at the bank and the grass grows every day. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that.”

“Mow it?” Dave says.

“I can’t mow it every day,” she says. “David, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Mom,” he says.

“Maybe grass is supposed to be that long and I don’t know,” she says. “What do I know about grass?”

“Does the yard have a tree?” Dave asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “Big old… I don’t know, something. It’s got leaves.”

“I’d hope it’s got leaves,” he says, laughing.

“When are you gonna come visit and see it for yourself?” she asks. “Maybe you can tell me what kind of tree it is, you were always the smart one — a real smart-ass, even.”

Dave swallows.

“I don’t meant that,” his mom says, when the silence stretches out. “We’re very proud of you.”

“Even Craig?” Dave asks.

“Well,” she says. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” he wants to ask. “How is it not fair?” But he would never speak to his mother like that.

“Does Craig want me in his house?” Dave asks.

“Now that doesn’t sound like it’s about Craig,” his mother says. Her voice is pointed. “I think if you kept your business to yourself, then you and Craig wouldn’t have any trouble.”

“Alright, Mom,” Dave says.

After a while, he hears her sigh into the phone. “I’m proud of you.”

“It’s okay,” Dave says. “I understand.”

“But you won’t visit?” she asks.

“No,” Dave says, feeling like his stomach is turning to stone. His whole body feels clammy, clay-like. 

“I understand,” she says.

“I love you, David,” she says.

“Send me a picture of the tree,” Dave tells her. “Maybe I can tell you what it is.”

After Dave falls back onto his dorm-size, twin bed, Melvin on the right knocks on the wall. 

“Sorry!” Dave says, very loudly.

He should really, really get a place. He’s been here a month already. He gets his computer out and checks his bank account. Yeah, he could get a place, but that’s a lot of paperwork. And saving for a bike is a lot easier.

He’ll stay here until they kick him out, which should’ve been the day he arrived. But there are open dorms. So, he’s in one.

He could do better.

Dave almost falls asleep for a moment, thinking about opening an apartment door and finding Klaus sitting on an overstuffed, black leather couch. He’s reading a book, like he always does at the café. Dave stops the fantasy there and rubs his face with both hands. His thoughts about Klaus really need to stay contained to his coffee runs. That’s a perfect, non-creepy place for them. Whatever this is? It’s not fair to some poor barista — baristo? — or to Dave.

He gets off the bed and goes to shower and shave.

After that, he goes to grab Cam so that they can both head out to get Jazzy and Shayna. He finds Cam dressed up, with his hair slicked back and a very tight t-shirt on. His arm is around Aimee from the office. Dave sighs.

“Is it OK if she comes?” Cam asks.

“Really, Aimee?” Dave asks. “You couldn’t have aimed a little higher?”

“Hey!” Cam says. But Aimee laughs.

“He’s tall,” she says. She puts a hand against Cam’s stomach. He’s a big guy and Dave supposes he can’t fault her for liking what she likes, but Cam has a bad habit of “falling in love” every week. It’s sort of part of his charm — that and the fact that he can sing opera at karaoke. And Dave kind of likes not being the biggest guy in his friend’s group. There’s some pressure off him, too. He’s not just surrounded by tiny lesbians who wanna pick fights any time he wants to hang out with people who aren’t straight.

“Jazzy is gonna be pissed if you two split her and Shayna up in the car,” Dave warns them.

And then, indeed, Aimee and Cam paw at each other in the backseat of Dave’s car only for Cam to get bullied into the front seat by five-foot-nothing in a bowtie. Jazzy triumphantly puts her arm around Aimee and Shayna in the back, until Shayna pulls her off. Aimee just laughs.

“Your friends are great,” she tells Dave over her first beer. “Why didn’t you introduce us before? I met Cam at a snack machine.”

“You should tell me about that sometime,” Dave tells her.

She doesn’t. She hangs off of Cam while Jazzy and her girlfriend hand Dave his own ass on the pool table. Jazzy drinks gin and tonics, before switching to whiskey and soda.

“The bartender says he’s doing something now called a whiskey sonic,” she says, on her third round. She’s swaying a little and Shayna holds her arm. Dave scans the bar for tables. He finds Aimee and Cam already sitting at one.

“Let’s go crash their party,” he suggests. Shayna nods.

“Apparently, you can mix whiskey with soda and tonic,” Jazzy explains. “But I didn’t go for it. I just couldn’t stop thinking about all that weird Sonic the Hedgehog porn you can see on the internet.”

“Wow,” Shayna says. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, baby,” Jazzy tells her. “I love you so much.”

Shayna leads her to the table and then lets go of her arm so that Jazzy sort of pours herself onto the barstool. Dave takes a seat close to the wall, picking at the splintered wood and the torn vinyl of the seat. The stuffing is cheap, plastic foam.

“Well,” Cam says, with his hand up Aimee’s shirt. “Hi, guys.”

He’s red in the face from drinking.

“Dave’s a shitty friend who told us to come sit here,” Jazzy says.

“Hey, no,” Cam says. “The more the merrier. Right?”

He looks at Dave, and Dave channels his mother as best he can to look disappointed. 

“Well, you’re still a great friend,” Cam says. “You always haul our drunk asses around.”

Aimee sighs and leans her head against Cam’s shoulder. Cam takes his hand out of her shirt and pets her cheek slightly. He kisses her hair. It’s sweet, even if they are just drunk and infatuated.

“Dave is so great,” Aimee says.

“Yeah,” Cam says. 

“He even took over the coffee runs for me,” she continues. “He’s my hero. Like, honestly, a knight in shining armor.”

Cam furrows up his brow a little. Jazzy goes, “What? What?” So Shayna fills her in on what Aimee’s saying. 

“I was getting migraines every day from the smell at this place. I’m sure it’s great if you like coffee, but ugh. It made me sick,” Aimee says. “But Cha-Cha is such a bitch already and we can’t even work if she doesn’t have coffee.”

Cam seems to relax, but Jazzy sits suddenly upright. She laughs sharply and slaps Dave’s back. He leans harder against the wall and turns his disappointment at her.

“Wow,” Jazzy says. “I can’t believe you’re Cha-Cha’s coffee bitch now.”

“It’s not like that,” Dave says.

“Oh?” she asks. “What’s it like then? Explain it.”

“I want to get the coffee,” Dave says.

Jazzy blinks. Then she laughs in his face. Dave sighs and looks away. He sips his water.

“Really?” she says. “Wow, okay, so it’s worse and you’re sucking your way up to a promotion. Good going.”

Her hand pats his back lightly.

“I think he’s just being nice,” Shayna says.

“Are the baristas hot?” Cam asks. 

Aimee hums and rubs her cheek against the front of his shirt. “I mean, yeah, they’re pretty good looking. One of the guys in the morning is even bigger than you.”

Without thinking, Dave says, “Luther?”

“Wow, you know his name!” Aimee says. She looks at him and smiles. Cam’s hand rests on the top of her head.

“Typical,” Jazzy says.

“I mean, I’ve been going there a lot,” Dave says. “I got lunch there today.”

“Seriously?” Aimee says.

Dave feels Jazzy’s fingers digging into his shoulder blade.

“Look, okay,” he starts. “Don’t you have moments at work when you’re like ‘I would give anything to not be at work right now’?”

“Obviously,” Jazzy says, without releasing her grip. “Who doesn’t?”

“Okay,” Dave says. “This is my moment. I get to not be at work.” What’s so hard to understand about it? He hunches his back up against Jazzy’s hand.

“But you’re just fetching coffee, that’s not really a break.”

“For me,” he says. “It is.”

“How?” she asks. “How is that a break?”

Her voice rises. “It’s lower than grunt work — no offense Aimee. It’s just, like, not what Dave should be doing at this point.”

Her hand drops off his back. She says, “It’s weird.”

There’s something rising at the center of Dave’s chest and it might be stomach acid. He sips his water again. He’s thinking about Klaus — Klaus’ face pressed against both his fists until his lips make a perfect little heart shape; Klaus smiling and winking and waving; Klaus reading a book with his feet on the table. 

“Look, if you got —” Dave tries again.

“Is she blackmailing you?” Jazzy asks. “Is that it?”

“Jazzy, could you just for one second…” Dave says. He rubs his hand against his face. He hardly believes in a divine force at work in the universe, and yet he feels tested by just such a thing. 

“Look,” he says, “do you like chocolate chip cookies?”

Klaus asked him about dessert, about being trapped on an island of Chips Ahoy. Dave would pick being trapped on an island with Klaus over an island made of infinitely fresh, infinitely perfect chocolate chip cookies. Is that too much? Probably.

“They don’t sell chocolate chip cookies,” Aimee says.

“It’s a metaphor,” Dave says.

“What’s that?” Aimee asks.

“Damn, Dave, you’re getting all philosophical on me,” Jazzy says, while Cam softly explains what a metaphor is to Aimee. “Alright, alright. Chocolate chip cookies. What kind of freak doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies?”

“People who are allergic to chocolate,” Shayna says. “Vegans.”

“Ugh,” Jazzy says.

Dave takes a deep breath and feels his cheeks puff out when he exhales. 

“So,” he says. Jazzy and Aimee are staring at him intently. There’s really nowhere else for him to look. 

“Imagine that just when you have that feeling that you wanna gnaw your hand off to get out of work, you get to drive somewhere and eat… like, a fresh-baked, homemade chocolate chip cookie,” he says. “That’s how I feel about this place.”

Klaus, the coffee, the jingling of the chime over the door. “I love it.”

“Okay,” Aimee says, “but they don’t sell chocolate chip cookies.”

“Girl, it’s a metaphor,” Jazzy says. “He already said that.”

“But what makes it like a cookie then?” she asks. “Who’s the cookie?”

Jazzy looks from Aimee to Dave, then back. She settles on Dave. Even sitting, she sways a little. She blinks slowly. Both her hands are on her half-finished drink. There is condensation pooling on the table.

“Wait,” Jazzy says. “Seriously, Dave, is it a guy?”

Dave looks at her. She looks at him. As far as he knows, nothing in his posture or expression changes. He doesn’t look any more or less embarrassed or annoyed or anything. 

“Who is it?” Jazzy asks. Then, “No! Wait!”

She points at Aimee and Aimee startles. She grabs Cam by his tight shirt.

“You tell me,” Jazzy says. “Who all works at this place? You’ve been there.”

“Uh,” Aimee says. “There’s the big guy?”

“Luther,” Dave says.

“Is it Luther?” Jazzy asks.

“It’s not Luther,” Dave says. He takes a sip of water. The melting ice in his glass hits his teeth.

“There’s a couple girls — I think just two,” Aimee says. “One lady with curly hair, she’s married.”

“Oh, it better not be her,” Jazzy says, like she’s about to punch someone.

“I’m gay, Jazzy,” Dave says.

“I don’t know how hot this chick is,” Jazzy insists. She looks at Dave and waves her arms. “She could be that hot!”

“She’s not that hot,” Dave tells her. He’s tired already. “And her name is Madison.”

“No,” Aimee says, “I think it’s Allison.”

“Really?” Dave says. Well, that just goes to show how much attention he pays in the morning.

“Yeah,” Aimee says, “and there’s another girl, tiny one, definitely gay. I almost gave her my number.”

“Wait, seriously?” Dave says. 

He looks at Aimee and sits up a little. She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Dave, you’re not the only one in our office.”

“Cha-Cha gives me, y’know, big vibes,” Jazzy says.

“Gross,” Dave says, with Aimee echoing her. That’s their boss.

“Okay, whatever,” Jazzy says. “Tell me about the guys.”

“There’s this short, weird guy, who’s like way too serious about coffee,” Aimee says.

Jazzy shakes her head, and Dave feels some relief. At least she knows him that well, even if she’s so gay she thinks he’d want a married woman. Dave looks over at Shayna and tries to remember what Allison looks like. Yeah, alright, he could see it. Jazzy just has a type. Shayna’s a divorcee, after all. 

“Oh,” Aimee says, “and there’s the guy who’s always wearing a hoodie. He has nice hair.”

“That’s Ben,” Dave says. There’s only one Ben.

“Is it Ben?” Jazzy asks.

“It’s not Ben,” Dave says.

Before he can tell Jazzy that it’s not _anyone_ , Aimee says, “There was another guy, like, really skinny and _really_ weird.”

Jazzy claps her hands. She grins until Dave can see some of her molars. “Dave always goes for the freaks!”

“Jazzy,” he says.

“I mean that in a good way,” she says, still smiling. “You’re friends with me, and I’m a freak. It’s cool, cause y’know, you wear khakis and I think most people don’t even think you’re gay.”

Now it’s Dave who rolls his eyes. “That’s not a good thing.”

“No, it’s definitely not a good thing,” Jazzy says. At least she takes a moment to drop the grin for that. They’ve talked about it enough.

“This guy is, definitely, like, I thought he was dating the hoodie guy, but maybe they’re just really good friends,” Aimee says. “But this guy is like… yeah.”

Dave scowls at her. What’s that supposed to mean?

“Like how yeah?” Jazzy asks.

“Weird,” Aimee says. “But, like, hot weird. I can see the hotness, maybe. Like, I thought maybe it’s just cause he’s skinny. Y’know, skinny people can wear whatever. He’s kinda goth, but also like, if he didn’t have a goatee and eyebrows I’d say he does drag or something.”

“So what?” Jazzy asks. “He wears makeup?”

Dave feels himself getting hot. He touches the buttons on his shirt. Jazzy once talked to him for an hour in the park about how being masculine made her wonder if she really wanted to be a man, but Dave still feels like… 

It’s not the same. Is it? Jazzy’s not… She wouldn’t. Isn’t the point of having a bunch of queer friends so that Dave will stop worrying like _this_.

“No,” Aimee says. “He wears heels and, like, dresses.”

“But he has a goatee,” Dave says.

Jazzy looks over at him and squints. She leans in close.

“Dave,” she says.

He’d probably shrink back, if there was anywhere for him to go. He wants to go home, and for a moment he thinks about his bedroom in Wisconsin. It’s not in the house where his mom lives. Who even knows who lives in the house where he grew up now? That place doesn’t exist. He can’t go home if he wants to.

“What?” he says.

“Dave,” she says again. “Is it because you wear khakis that you just, like, automatically narrow in on the gender weirdest people you can find?”

“What?” Dave asks. What does that even mean? 

“Do we need to talk about this?” Jazzy asks. She puts her hand on his shoulder. “Like, I mean that as a friend. Is this a _thing_?”

“I just…” Dave stops. He tries to think of what to say. But he doesn’t know what kind of _thing_ Jazzy thinks this is. 

“I just think he’s sweet,” he says.

And beautiful and funny and kind. And, let’s be real, Klaus is brave. It’s not that Dave wants to wear high heels. He isn’t allowed to grow a goatee. No, no, it’s that Dave gets to see just a few minutes of how Klaus lives and he just… He’d like to just be close to that. He’d like to bask in it, like a cat in a sunbeam.

“What’s his name?” Jazzy asks.

“His name is Klaus,” Dave says.

“Cool,” she says. “I’m gonna call ‘em Cookie. Since you think they’re so sweet.” 

Jazzy grins at him and lurches forward. Dave has to make a sudden movement to catch her and she still slides right off her bar stool.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Jazzy says. “And you should probably ask this Klaus their pronouns, y’know? To not be a douche.”

She steadies on her feet and points a finger right at Dave’s nose.

“Don’t be a douche, Dave,” she says.

“I did!” Dave says. “I mean, I didn’t. I asked.”

Jazzy squints at him, then she looks away so she can climb back onto her seat.

“Good,” she says.

She nods her head and picks up the watery drink. 

“Yo,” Cam says. “You should take a picture of this guy, I wanna see what he looks like.”

“I only see him while he’s working,” Dave says.

“So?” Cam asks.

“So?” Jazzy says. “You’re not supposed to photograph the art in the museums and you’re definitely not supposed to be trying to fuck people when they’re at work.”

Cam frowns and Dave knows that Jazzy’s glare is getting to him. He wasn’t going to say anything, but he’s grateful that Jazzy has. Aimee, thankfully, seems blissfully unaware. But they’re all a few drinks in.

“Don’t fight,” Dave says, and he sighs. They probably wouldn’t actually. He thinks.

He wonders, again, what Klaus does on Saturday nights. It’s probably more fun than this.

“Whatever,” Cam says. “If you meet him outside work, then, like… you gotta shoot your shot, man.”

Dave shrugs. He turns his glass of water around in the ring of its own condensation. It moves so smoothly.

“Things right now are good,” he says.

“You know how Dave is, sis, lay off,” Jazzy says.

He could protest, but Dave knows exactly how Dave is. And things are good. He looks forward to seeing Klaus. Seeing Klaus makes him happy. Klaus doesn’t have to do anything but exist. And Dave doesn’t have to worry too much that he’s being a fucking creep. Even though, probably, he is. But hey, Dave can afford $60 in tips a week without cutting into his motorcycle savings. If it gets bad, he’ll just decide what’s more fun: Hulu and HBO or Klaus. Klaus will probably win, because Klaus can’t be pirated on the internet.

“You alright?” Jazzy asks.

Dave realizes he’s been leaning on his elbow and not paying attention to where the conversation is going.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine.”

“Is it cool if we head out?” she asks.

“I think everyone’s super tired,” Shayna offers.

Dave looks at Aimee and finds her with her head against Cam’s arm, her eyes closed.

Jazzy pays the tab; Cam pays her his portion. Shayna helps Dave shovel everyone into his car. After dropping Jazzy and Shayna at the on-base housing, Aimee moves to the front seat instead of following them in.

“Can you drive me and Cam to my place?” she asks. “It’s kind of far.”

“Yeah,” Dave says. “It’s not a problem.”

“I have gas money,” she says. 

“Not a problem, Aimee,” he says.

“You’re the best,” she says. “Like, seriously, the best.”

The apartment is over thirty minutes away, clear through town. Dave idles his car outside the building. Aimee and Cam walk leaning against each other in the dark. Dave watches them until they disappear up the stairs.

He doesn’t have to drive past The Umbrella Cafe to get back to the dorms, but it is one way to get through town. Not the fastest way, but a way. The metal security doors are closed over the plate glass windows. Dave hopes that Klaus is asleep in bed. For some reason, he imagines him in a giant canopy bed with gauzy purple fabric everywhere. Certainly it’s not a realistic thought, but it carries Dave through the rest of his drive back to his parking spot and the mechanical journey to bed. Toilet. Wash hands. Brush teeth. Pajamas. Read book. Sleep.

Dave wakes up at oh four hundred thirty on the dot. He groans and rolls over, pulling his pillow against the side of his face.

It’s Sunday and even though he doesn’t have any assignments today, he dreads going to work tomorrow. The day has only begun and he’s already tired.

But work… Work means coffee runs. And Klaus usually works on Mondays, doesn’t he? Dave is nowhere close to learning Klaus’ schedule. He doesn’t want to ask what it is or take notes or anything. That would be… That would be creepy, definitely. He knows that.

But tomorrow is Monday and Monday means he might see Klaus. He might.

It’s stupid, and maybe creepy, but it’s enough to get him out of bed. Dave does laundry. He gets some groceries. He checks in on Jazzy and Cam via text and declines pizza and beer with some of the guys next door. They always order pepperoni. 

It’s a quiet day. And Monday is quiet too, somehow. The routine has been thoroughly established, such that Cha-Cha doesn’t even question it. She gives Dave her card in the morning and after lunch; he gives her the receipts and her Americanos.

On Monday, Klaus is wearing a tanktop with an unbuttoned shirt over it, draped around his shoulders like a sweater. His skirt swishes around his knees as he steps around the counter. He puts his apron on, so that Dave can actually see his name tag. The U in his name is a little smiley face.

“Hello, handsome,” Klaus says, and Dave smiles at him. It’s probably weird. Klaus is just nice to him because he has to be, but he’s _so_ nice. Dave is so grateful.

“The usual, right? I’ll ring you right up. Just gotta… Wow, alright, credit card reader don’t — okay, alright, yeah, work.”

He looks up at Dave and smiles. His eyeliner always makes his eyes look bigger, Dave thinks.

“Hey, how come Hanscom isn’t pronounced like handsome?” Klaus asks.

“I have no idea,” Dave says. This is the best part of his day. His phone buzzes in his pocket. He’d forgotten it was even there.

He checks it only when he gets in the car — the coffee order safely buckled into the passenger seat and the Americano in the cup holder.

“DAVE!!! How’s Cookie today? Still sweet?” Jazzy has texted him.

Dave sits and stares at his phone. He looks around, expecting to see Jazzy or her car somewhere nearby.

“wtf,” he types back.

“I’m being nosy ;),” Jazzy replies. “So how’s????”

“Good,” Dave replies.

“And you???? Still sweet?”

“Yeah,” Dave types. “Gotta drive but you know.”

“No I don’t know YOU SHOULD TELL ME.” Jazzy answers before Dave has even started the car. He sighs. Is it so bad if his friends know? Is it so bad if Dave just admits he has a crush?

It’s not creepy to have a crush. Maybe childish? It’s a little high school. But in high school, Dave was desperately trying to convince everyone around him that he was heterosexual — and Christian. And that sucked. He’s here, buying coffee for Cha-Cha and meeting people like Jazzy, because he couldn’t do that anymore.

“How is anyone after their crush calls them handsome?” Dave types. He couldn’t let it get to him there, but he sets his phone aside and takes off the parking brake.

As he drives, he feels what’s probably butterflies. It’s like his public speaking anxiety, but not as painful. Klaus called him handsome.

He thinks about it all the way to the parking lot on base.

Jazzy’s text says it all: “REALLY DAVE HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter @jffgldblm90s and on tumblr at jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s.tumblr.com. Chapters will be posted weekly!


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